Marius Bagdonas: The start of a league with COVID-19 mermaid masking turned to shame

On Tuesday 15 minutes Journalist Mantas Krasnickas announced that the Vilnius Knights are continuing preparations for the start of the league A season, although the number of positive COVID-19 cases at the club has dramatically reached 17 in recent days.

Janas Nevoina, who heads the Vilnius club and the entire A league, does not dramatize the situation and remains convinced that his men can continue training, despite the fact that the infected footballers and coaches were still sweating together a few days ago.

The normal isolation period after contact with a person infected with COVID-19 is 14 days. The duration of isolation can be reduced to 10 days by performing a SARS-CoV-2 PCR assay no earlier than 7 days of isolation and obtaining a negative result, even in the absence of symptoms. Exceptions may apply to high-performance athletes participating in international tournaments, but the Knights do not meet this criteria – last year they were last in the A-League and will watch European battles unless through blue screens.

But Vilnius Club understands and interprets these rules in its own way. While the National Public Health Center (NVSC) trampled the place and “tried” to search the infected with their backs, the Knight of the Head began to powder the popcorn ever deeper by changing the plate and stating that only those who had no contact with the infected were training. However, after the media release and the investigation initiated by the NVSC, common sense took over: On Wednesday, the club quietly halted the training process.

Regardless of how the NVSC evaluation ends, this story has shamefully highlighted a big problem in Lithuanian football: the scorers in our stadiums continue to play only according to their own rules.

The (in) perception of the situation is good news. The A-League president had already demonstrated his approach to the ongoing pandemic process a few weeks earlier, stating that he would work to ensure that all soccer players in the championship were included in the vaccination process as a matter of priority.

Are you serious, President? Do you think that the footballers who get stuck in the matches of the matches that are agreed almost every year are somewhat superior to the representatives of other sports, or even more so to their vaccines as the oldest in the country waiting to be saved?

Such negligent illusions by J.Nevoina are a total public relations collapse and it is highly disappointing that there are no competent people at the A League table who can pay attention to this and break a Belarusian worldview with at least a little bit. colder water. But is that surprising? No, there has always been a lack of people in Lithuanian football who did something because they believed it and believed it, and not because it was a ladder to power.

Therefore, it is no wonder that at the last A League Board meeting, when J. Nevoina gave birth and introduced the old / new A League Director, no one complained against her.

Why at least have to complain? This is because Meda Piečytė, who has recently become the right hand of the owner of “Knights”, was already relegated to the same position in 2017, when David Šemberas broke through the doors of the A league.

This experiment turned into a failed party before starting. The endless intrigues of the mansion, only ripe fruits are picked and a diluted cocktail is whipped, there is no plan B, but nothing is done to make it unnecessary, such was the short but effective leadership of M.Piečytė. It was obvious to everyone that he would not go uphill with the downhill mentality, but the strangest thing is that now the club leaders of League A do not remember or are afraid to remember him.

But it has already become commonplace in the corridors of the LFF that the “against” hands are raised much louder during matches, if the real Lithuanian football general Arūnas Pukelis presses them to greet them beforehand.

What does M.Piečytė have to do with the former criminal authority of Tauragė? The story is as simple as twice. The new A-league director is the daughter of the former mayor of Tauragė and a good friend of A.Pukelis Robertas Piečia. The best moments for Arūnas’ “business” were when Tauragė was hosted by this director.

Of course, children are not responsible for the mistakes of their parents, but in the federation M.Piečytė began to rotate just when the influence of the father was taken over by his father’s friend.

But A.Pukelis and J.Nevoinas are connected not only by the daughter of the former mayor of Tauragė. Another common denominator in the history of both men is Belarus, and if it is more precisely, the Belarusian mentality. Perhaps by chance, on the map presented by League A itself on Thursday with the new slogan “More football”, the logo of J.Nevoina’s club appeared in Lithuania and in Astrava.

I understand that looking at the world from Aliaksandr Lukashenko’s side, things look different, but when the world is taken from the deathbed, the gears of football do not turn in Lithuania, unlike Belarus, and Mr. Nevoin should realize how much Belarusian diesel you have in your boat.

The current president of league A has another entry in his biography, which A. Pukelis does not delete from his biography. The lucrative trade in petroleum products from Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan at the turn of the century not only allowed him to plant the first football seedlings, but also cost him several days in a dungeon in Germany when he was detained at the Frankfurt airport under a European mandate. warrant.

But many things have changed since then. After patiently investing for 16 years and waiting for the result, J. Nevoina had become almost an exemplary leader of the A-league club, but the sharp drop in oil prices, the end of the season of the knights of the league A and the UEFA tap became shuffled the cards and reveals the other side of Vilnius. And he’s not that different from Vladimir Romanov or Vadim Kastujev, two other scandalous rescuers who were not short of Slavic colors, whose personal ambitions to elevate Lithuanian soccer to historic heights eventually led to the extinction of clubs.

The only difference is that the teams that collapsed in Kaunas and Vilnius were rebuilt by the fans. The Trakai-born project, even if it was artificially moved to the capital, will not be saved by anyone. Furthermore, after today’s events, even municipal employees will look at the Knights with outstretched hands, who until now felt that Vilnius “Žalgiris” had too much to do with the city.

And, perhaps rightly, no club that cynically spits out the rules and recommendations of a state racked by a coronavirus is worth it.

Knights who have stopped training will not play the weekend and COVID-19 may not be distributed. However, there is a high probability that the red flame will explode in the Marijampolė maneuver on Sunday, where vice-champion Sūduva will host Panevėžys. It is a public secret that these days four positive cases have been registered in the Aukštaitija club, but the A league is indifferent, looking at what happens when one or the other rope is pulled. The Knights, who are at the epicenter of the events, have not been able to give any explanation to the public during all this time, and the greatest responsibility for this falls on the shoulders of J. Nevoina and his trustee M. Pičytė.

Of course, just a few days before the start of the championship, they do not want to overturn the carriage with apples, but it is obvious that League A needs stronger screws, because after this scandal with the footballers sent to the pandemic, Los Caballeros will take a long time to clarify .

In any Western state, at least some self-respecting supporters would certainly not forgive such mistakes at a delicate time for the state, so it will be very interesting how the general sponsor and the recently introduced official announcer will assess this situation.

Whats Next? The wish of the people for the president of the A-League would be simple: “Brother, not brother, get out of the trench”, because without showing basic respect, Lithuanian football will never bring the fans back to the stadiums. No matter how strong the desire to control the ball is, people’s lives should be more important.