New Govt decree blocks Serie A games

By Football Italia staff

The Italian Government has issued a new decree ordering the suspension of all sporting events in Coronavirus-affected regions until March 8, including Atalanta-Lazio, Bologna-Juventus and Inter-Sassuolo.

That means all games based in the cluster regions – Lombardy, Veneto, Emilia-Romagna, then more specifically the cities of Savona and Pesaro-Urbino – will either be behind closed doors or not played at all.

This would include Serie A fixtures next weekend such as Atalanta-Lazio, Bologna-Juventus, Inter-Sassuolo and Verona-Napoli.

It is far from over, because the various Serie A clubs have already protested at the decision to postpone matches to May 13 rather than play behind closed doors.

They maintain this set a precedent and they will no longer accept an order to play behind closed doors.

This was confirmed this evening when the President of the Liguria Regional government announced Sampdoria-Verona – due to kick off on Monday at 19.45 GMT – would be played behind closed doors.

Just a few hours later, the Lega Serie A instead confirmed the match had been rescheduled to May 13, just like other Week 26 fixtures Juventus-Inter, Milan-Genoa, Udinese-Fiorentina, Sassuolo-Brescia and Parma-SPAL.

An extraordinary meeting of the 20 Serie A clubs has been organised for Wednesday in Rome, but the situation is becoming completely untenable.

There are simply no other available dates in the calendar to play these rescheduled games, especially with Euro 2020 coming up this summer.

To make matters worse, Inter, Napoli, Atalanta, Juventus and Roma are all in European competition for the Round of 16.

Juve, Milan, Inter and Napoli are also in the Coppa Italia semi-finals, which are due to be played next week.

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