Italy's soccer teams have decided to play this weekend, even if many of the matches will take place in empty stadiums because of new anti-hooligan measures, the head of the country's clubs' association said on Thursday.
After a policeman was killed last Friday during a soccer riot in Sicily, the government first suspended all soccer matches and then decreed that only those stadiums which meet new security standards could open to the public.
Some players and officials said matches should not go ahead behind closed doors and there was even talk of a soccer "strike" to force the government to change policy. But at a meeting of club representatives, the clubs' association, Lega Calcio, decided instead to play on.
"After a very lively discussion where many different opinions came up against each other, I have to communicate that we decided to play, to demonstrate our seriousness and our share of the responsibility for the country's problems," Lega Calcio head Antonio Matarrese said.
Clubs say the government is over-reacting to an isolated incident -- though officer Filippo Raciti's death was the second in a week in Italian soccer, after an amateur league official was kicked to death while trying to stop a fight at a match.
Italian police are questioning a 17-year-old boy over the death of Raciti, the 38-year-old policeman who was hit and had a homemade explosive thrown into his car as rival fans went on a rampage at a Serie A derby in Catania last Friday.
About 41 people were arrested after the incident, many of them charged with resisting police offers and causing injuries. Police have been studying video surveillance tapes at Massimino stadium in Catania to try to find out who killed their colleague.
Only six soccer stadiums in the country meet security requirements, meaning that league games in other arenas will be played behind closed doors.
The Olympic Stadium in Rome made the list, while the San Siro stadium in Milan did not, the Italian Interior Ministry said.
The other stadiums that were deemed safe were in Genoa, Siena, Cagliari, Turin and Palermo. Arenas in Florence, Naples and Bologna were among the 25 considered unsafe.
According to the findings of security standards at the stadiums, five of Sunday's Serie A games will be played behind closed doors, while five will be open to the public.
Officials said, however, that further checks on the stadiums would be carried out in the coming days. The officials also banned all night matches in the Serie A and in the lower divisions.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier