Bulgaria Health Minister greenlights restart of football matches on June 5
Bulgaria’s Health Minister Kiril Ananiev said on June 2 that he approved the plans to resume domestic professional football matches starting June 5, with some restrictions on attendance numbers.
Ananiev’s order said that all sports competitions, both indoors and outdoors, remained banned until June 14, with the sole exception made for top- and second-tier professional football league matches.
The match attendance was to be restricted to 30 per cent of a stadium’s capacity and fans were required to be spaced apart, with at least two seats between spectators, the order said.
The sport’s national governing body, Bulgarian Football Union, drafted plans in May to resume top-tier football matches on June 5, to play out the remaining 12 rounds of games by mid-July, as well as the semi-finals and final of the Bulgarian Cup, the latter being scheduled for July 1.
BFU declared the second tier season done, using the standings after the completion of 22 matches. Under its plan, which did not envision any fans in stadiums, the only matches involving second-tier clubs would be promotion and relegation play-offs.
Non-competitive sports activity in gyms was allowed without any spacing restriction and swimming pools were also allowed to operate, Ananiev’s order said.
(Photo: Juan Carlos Arellano/sxc.hu)
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