Football club licensing in 2021 in Latvia offered some unexpected turns.

Latvian football expansion

Virslīga, the Latvian Higher League, in 2020 contained 10 teams. For two seasons in row the league attempted expansion. Compared to 2019, the league had expanded by one team (nine teams finished the season in 2019). similar trend as a year earlier (only 8 teams did in 2018).

Failing candidates

The licensing process for 2021 Virslīga season was started by 11 teams. The process was announced later than usual, beginning of January 2021.

We will separately look in more details at the failure of 2 out of 11 clubs to obtain the license for 2021 Virslīga season.

The missed opportunity of Auda

Particular attention on our blog at a later moment will be paid to the case of FK “Auda” that went to attempt 1 appeal.

Recently it was announced that the highest ranked Latvian football competition in 2021 has lost the ninth team. Should the remaining teams act accordingly, there is a good chance the competition will have 8 teams to classify at the end of the season.

Going wrong ways for Noah

We will also look at the case of the cancellation of the license for “Noah” football club in Latvian Virslīga for 2021 season in another blog post.

In the recent history of the Latvian football league a couple of clubs had lost their rights to continue the season for several reasons:

• SK Babīte in 2017;
• FB Gulbene in 2015.

The previous event of a club being excluded had taken place in 2009.

Match fixing means ban from Latvian football

The media has reported that all of the cases have been very closely linked to match fixing.