diff --git a/.github/workflows/python-package.yml b/.github/workflows/python-package.yml
index ab11efb..27c2339 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/python-package.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/python-package.yml
@@ -23,6 +23,9 @@ jobs:
       uses: actions/setup-python@v2
       with:
         python-version: ${{ matrix.python-version }}
+    - name: Install build dependencies for requests in python 3.9
+      # it's not clear why this is needed only for this version of python
+      run: sudo apt-install libxml2-dev libxslt-dev
     - name: Install Poetry
       uses: snok/install-poetry@v1.1.8
       with: