Polish Zaglembe Sosnowiec, whose head coach was recently appointed ex-Dynamo Kiev coach Oleksandr Khatskievich, has revised its plans for the off-season preparation for political reasons.
Aleksandr KhatskiewiczAccording to local media, the club originally planned to hold a training camp in Turkey from 27 January to 6 February, but abandoned such plans for political reasons. The fact is that there is an extradition treaty between Turkey and Belarus, while Khatskevich, being a Belarusian, has never hidden his views and position on both Lukashenko's regime and Russia's war against Ukraine. This situation raised concerns among the Zaglembe management and the club cancelled the training camp in Turkey.
"We decided not to go to the training camp in Turkey. This is purely for political reasons. Our coach and sports director (Mikhail Zalevski - editor's note) are from Belarus and have repeatedly raised the topic of war. We are afraid of a situation in which both of them, having gone to Turkey, will not be able to come back with us.
We contacted the Polish Embassy in Turkey and asked what would happen if our specialists from Belarus were detained, and received the answer that they could not help us in this situation. For peace of mind, we cancelled the training camp," explained Arkadiusz Aleksander, president of Zaglembe, during a recent press conference on the changes in the club.
