Russian Premier League opts to restart football tournament either on June 21 or 28

MOSCOW, April 27. /TASS/. The executive management of the Russian Premier League (RPL) believes the national championship’s football matches may be restarted either on June 21 or June 28, the RPL press service announced in a statement on Monday. The executive management of the RPL and the Russian Football Union (RFU) held an online meeting with the clubs on Monday to discuss opportunities for restarting the national football tournament, which had been suspended due to the ongoing global spread of the novel coronavirus. The Russian Premier League’s (RPL) season was initially postponed from March 17 until April 10. The league’s clubs completed 22 out of 30 scheduled rounds of the championship. On April 1, the Executive Committee of the Russian Football Union (RFU) extended the postponement of all football matches in Russia, including RPL matches, until May 31. On April 1, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) made a decision to postpone national football tournaments due to the threat of COVID-19. In late December 2019, Chinese officials notified the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, in central China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus — named COVID-19 by the WHO — have been reported in every corner of the globe, including Russia. On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. According to the latest statistics, over 3,000,000 people have been infected worldwide and more than 208,000 deaths have been reported. In addition, so far, over 893,000 individuals have recovered from the illness across the globe. To date, a total of 87,147 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Russia, with 7,346 patients having recovered from the virus. Russia’s latest data indicates 794 fatalities nationwide. Earlier, the Russian government set up an Internet hotline to keep the public updated on the coronavirus situation. Read more