Italy’s Serie A on Thursday was given the green light to resume on June 20 after a three-month absence as one of the nations hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic begins to ease restrictions.
Italian Minister for Sport Vincenzo Spadafora said that the government’s Technical and Scientific Committee (CTS) had agreed to the health protocol proposed by the Italian Football Federation (FIGC).
“Italy has started to return to normal life again, it is only right that football should do the same,” Spadafora said. “The federation assured me that it had a plan B and a plan C. In light of these considerations, the championship can resume on June 20.”
Photo: Reuters
FIGC president Gabriele Gravina told the minister during a videoconference that there would be a playoff system if the league was again interrupted, while the existing standings would be used if it was stopped.
“We had a very useful meeting,” Spadafora said. “From the start, I said that football could restart once all the security conditions had been met.”
No top-flight Italian matches have been played since US Sassuolo beat Brescia 3-0 on March 9.
Serie A now faces a scheduling nightmare for matches that are to take place behind closed doors.
“I’m happy and satisfied,” Gravina said. “The restart of football represents a message of hope for the whole country.”
Serie A teams were due to meet yesterday to examine the possible schedules for the remaining Serie A and Coppa Italia matches, 127 in total.
Most teams have 12 league games left to play, but there were four postponed fixtures.
“Finally today we have a date and the certainty that the championship will resume, it is a further signal that Italy is starting again,” Juventus captain Giorgio Chiellini said. “We can’t wait to get on the pitch and do what we love most, certain that we can give so many emotions to the millions of fans who were waiting.”
However, many issues remain to be resolved, including the schedule, players’ contracts which end on June 30 and unpaid TV rights.
“Having a certain date is certainly a step forward, but problems remain and we hope to resolve them,” players’ union president Damiano Tommasi said. “Footballers are not robots, there are concerns. A critical issue is [playing a] match at 4:30pm, which in June and July in Italy is unthinkable.”
The thorniest issue remains the two-week quarantine period in the case of a positive test, which Spadafora said would remain.
“I’m ready to bet on the resumption of the championship, but with this rule of quarantine of 14 days, the possibilities of concluding it are not high,” Italian Football Doctors’ Association president Enrico Castellacci said.
“It’s a crime. I’m not going to quarantine 50 healthy people. We don’t do this if there is a positive case in a factory,” SS Lazio club doctor Ivo Pulcini said.
The Roman club are committed to a resumption of the season, as they sit just one point behind leaders Juventus.
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