Sports director of Zhodino Torpedo-BelAZ Alexey Yushkevich said that the Belarusian club has not yet had discussions about possible entry into the Russian football championship.

Earlier, the Minister of Sports of the Russian Federation Oleg Matytsin, at the forum “Russia – a sports power” in Perm, said that work is underway to include clubs from Belarus in the list of participants in the Russian football championship. The Russian side is already waiting for concrete proposals on teams from the neighboring state, which will then be discussed with the Russian Football Union (RFU).

— There are a lot of questions about this initiative. There were no discussions on this topic in the club either. There is no notification yet whether such a championship is planned or not. Torpedo-BelAZ lives by the old rules.

If you look at the proposal of the Russian Ministry of Sports from the side of the football industry, then these are extra financial costs, and very large ones at that. If we take the game moments, it is interesting to play matches with other teams, but what to do with the domestic championship and European cups? There is still a lot of uncertainty.

From the point of view of the football aspect, the initiative is interesting – this could be a world-class championship. But from an economic point of view, many questions arise. And what will happen next? The RPL is not allowed into European cups, and the goals of Belarusian clubs are to win medals in the local championship and perform in the international arena. If our football as a sister city integrates with Russian football, what awaits us? This question is on the surface. If they were offered to five Belarusian teams, where would they go: to the RPL or the FNL? This is also an important question. In general, there are no specifics yet, you can think about this issue for days,” Sport24 quotes Yushkevich as saying.

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