Belarus’s extraordinary players and their legal battle to ban themselves from the international game

A group of Belarussian athletes and footballers are heading to CAS in an attempt to get UEFA to ban their own country’s participation in international football.

Players say that UEFA haven’t investigated allegations of match-fixing and political interference, and allege that UEFA and FIFA facilitate Belarus’s dictatorship via solidarity payments, which total around €10 million over the past year.

Why it matters: Athletes seeking a legal path to their own exclusion from international sport is almost unprecedented.

The perspective: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has awakened governing bodies to the human rights dimension of sport, but while Russia has been banned, its ally Belarus has had limited sanctions.