They have not, however, had the greatest ‘home’ record since being obliged by Fifa to play at a neutral venue – and behind closed doors – as a result of the country’s support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Indeed, they have only overcome Andorra and Kosovo in the 11 competitive games played under such circumstances, drawing all three in Zalaegerszeg during the most Nations League campaign against Bulgaria, Luxembourg and Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n
Belarus are growing used to adversity. <\/p>\n
Visa issues delayed their journey from Athens to Hungary, their adopted home, but it is the very fact of playing constantly outside of Belarus and without the backing of supporters that is most testing, according to head coach Carlos Alos.<\/p>\n
“When you don’t buy a home, you rent a home, it is not the same, it is not your home,” said the Spaniard. <\/p>\n
“We have always troubles, never play at home, never time to be in our home to prepare some games. We spend almost no time in Belarus.<\/p>\n
“Ask the coach of Scotland if he prefers to play at home or away, he will say we prefer to play always at home.<\/p>\n
“We are very appreciative of the support we receive [in Hungary], but it is not our home. We want to play with our supporters.”<\/p>\n
Who knows when they will be allowed to do so again, but for now the Belarus players will continue to struggle against the odds for reasons beyond their control.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They have not, however, had the greatest ‘home’ record since being obliged by Fifa to play at a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405799,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5009],"tags":[748,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-405798","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scotland","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-scotland","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115164260922562428","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}