Govt: 'Serie A decided to postpone'

By Football Italia staff

The Lega Serie A “made the decision autonomously” to postpone games, confirms the Minister for Sport Vincenzo Spadafora, as the Government was happy to let them play behind closed doors.

The rescheduling of Juventus-Inter, Udinese-Fiorentina, Milan-Genoa, Parma-SPAL and Sassuolo-Brescia to May 13 was only announced this morning, even though the order to play behind closed doors was given on Thursday.

Minister for Sport Spadafora released a statement confirming that the rescheduling was not a Government order.

“In the Coronavirus emergency, the Government and other authorities have been forced to make some unpopular, but necessary decisions.

“With regards to the sporting events, after an initial phase of total lockdown, we authorised – on the request of the CONI, FIGC and Lega Calcio – the possibility of training and playing behind closed doors.

“We put the decision back into their hands, giving them the choice of whether or not to use this option.

“With regards to the upcoming games, the unanimous verdict of the sport and football leaders was to favour postponement rather than playing in an empty stadium, taking into account the repercussions in terms of image for our country and the difficulties in organising supplemental rounds in a packed fixture list.

“It was an autonomous decision, one that as the Minister I welcomed. Every evaluation on the repercussions in a sporting sense of this decision are down to the sporting organisations, certainly not the Minister for Sport or the Government.”

In other words, the Lega Serie A and FIGC made the decision to postpone the games rather than play behind closed doors.

This is a choice that has caused huge controversy, as it’s feared it will favour those clubs who would otherwise have lost much of their home advantage in an empty stadium.

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