MOSCOW, June 2. /TASS/. The Russian Premier League (RPL) has published a calendar of football matches, which will be resumed to complete the currently suspended season of the national football championship, the RPL press service said in a statement on Tuesday.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko stated earlier in the day that RPL matches, which were earlier put on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic, would now resume two days earlier than the previously announced date of June 21.
According to the RPL press service, the 2019/2020 RPL Russian Championship’s Round 23 will be resumed on June 19 with a match between Krylya Sovetov FC and Akhmat Grozny FC. The following day will see a clash between football clubs CSKA Moscow and Zenit St. Petersburg.
Early this month, the RPL Executive Board decided to resume matches of the Russian Football Championship on June 21. The Russian Sports Ministry officially approved this date on May 21. The matches of the regular season had been postponed several times earlier in the year due to the ongoing global spread of the novel coronavirus.
However, Deputy Prime Minister Chernyshenko announced to journalists earlier in the day: "Football has been always drawing particular attention <…> The sport of football will be once again with us starting from June 19, when RPL matches are resumed."
The RPL’s calendar of matches announced on Tuesday stipulates the following dates to complete the remaining games of the national top-football league: Round-24 to be held on June 26-28; Round-25 will be played between June 30 and July 1; Round-26 is now scheduled for July 4-5; Round-27 to take place on July 7-8; while matches of Round-28 and Round-29 will be organized on July 11-12 and July 15-16 respectively.
Matches of the final RPL stage, Round-30, have been scheduled to start simultaneously at 7:00 p.m. Moscow time on July 22.
Prior to the RPL shutdown, the league’s clubs completed 22 out of 30 scheduled rounds of the championship. On April 1, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) recommended restarting national football tournaments.
After 22 rounds of the 2019/2020 season of the Russian Championship, Zenit St. Petersburg FC ranks first in the national tournament’s standings with 50 points, while Krasnodar FC is third with 41 points following Lokomotiv Moscow FC, which currently has 41 points as well.
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 6,383,800 people have been infected worldwide and more than 377,700 deaths have been reported. In addition, so far, over 2,920,880 individuals have recovered from the illness across the globe.
To date, a total of 423,741 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Russia, with 186,985 patients having recovered from the disease. Russia’s latest data indicates 5,037 fatalities nationwide. Earlier, the Russian government set up an Internet hotline to keep the public updated on the coronavirus situation.