Belarus players initially made optimistic noises about stunning the rest of the group, but a heavy opening defeat in Greece and a comfortable win for Scotland in Hungary has already seriously dented their hopes of being in with a chance to be in the mix for qualification.
And their FA’s chief executive has all but thrown in the towel ahead of their matches against Denmark and Scotland.
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He said: “I want to believe in our team until the very end and to trust them.
“But at the same time, I don’t want to give our fans any hope because there isn’t any.
“Let’s be realistic about this – for 30 years we haven’t gone anywhere in qualification terms, except for the Olympic Games and our youth team at the Euros.
“And we almost always finished in last place in qualifiers.
“Our performances in the last qualifiers for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups were disastrous.
“So I think we have to accept we have no right to be thinking about winning the group.”