MOSCOW, March 10. /TASS/. The national football teams of Russia and Grenada will play a friendly match next week in the Russian capital of Moscow, the press service of the Russian team announced on Monday in a statement.

According to the statement, the match is scheduled to kick off on March 19 at 8:00 p.m. Moscow time (17:00 GMT) at the Dinamo Stadium in Moscow.

On March 25, the Russian national squad is also scheduled to play a friendly match against the team from Zimbabwe also at the Dinamo Stadium in Moscow.

In mid-January, the Russian Football Union published its calendar of sports events for 2025. According to the calendar, the Russian national football squad will play ten friendlies this year, eight of them at home.

Russia’s opponents were not specified in the calendar. It did state, however, that Russia will play a friendly in Asia between March 21 and 25 and go to Africa for another one some time between November 14-18.

Last year, Russia played five friendly football matches, three of them at home. The national squad played against Serbia (4-0), Belarus (4-0), Vietnam (3-0), Brunei (11-0) and Syria 4-0).

The team was also supposed to play against Thailand at a football tournament in Vietnam but the match was cancelled due to poor weather in Hanoi.

Russia’s football ban

The world’s governing football body, FIFA, announced on February 28, 2022, that the Russian national team and all professional clubs representing the country were barred from participating in FIFA tournaments.

In turn, the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) made a similar decision regarding the Russian national football team’s participation in UEFA tournaments.

Both FIFA and UEFA cited Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine as grounds for their respective bans on Russian teams’ participation in competitions.