Last week the Serie A championship had to fill a regulatory void in its health protocol that emerged after the first 14 coronavirus positives among Genoa players and staff, which forced the championship match against Turin to be postponed. In the last weekend, the developments related to the Genoa case - which in the meantime have become a hotbed of infections with 22 confirmed positives - have brought to the surface an even wider issue, which risks compromising the continuation of the season.
It all started on Saturday, one day after Juventus-Napoli, postponement of the
third match day of Serie A, when Napoli, the last team to have faced Genoa, did
not leave for Turin on indications from the ASL Napoli 1 Centro and the
Campania Region. The previous day the company had detected two coronavirus
positivity: the player Piotr Zieliński and a member of the technical staff. To
these, another player, Eljif Elmas, was added on Saturday.
If one or more positives are ascertained in a team, the Serie A health protocol - approved at
the time by the CTS and the Ministry of Health - provides for the quarantine of
the positives, the isolation of the team in a place agreed with the
possibility, however, to train and possibly play the matches scheduled in the
calendar, if the thresholds of positive players established by the League are
not exceeded (at least 13 players available, or at least 10 positive players to
request a postponement). Furthermore, the isolation is only foreseen starting
from positivity within the so-called team group: in the swabs carried out by
all of Napoli three days after the match with Genoa, no positivity emerged,
which is why the team did not go in isolation first.
According to the Gazzetta Dello Sport, the federal prosecutor
would have opened an investigation to establish whether Napoli followed the
protocol: before Friday, however, for the FIGC medical commission it correctly
observed the procedures. The doubts concern the isolation of the players since
Friday, spent in their respective homes, and not in one place, this is because
the hotel in Castel Volturno indicated by the company as the one used for the
isolation of the team was not yet ready to host the team group.
According to what was reported by the lawyer of the company,
Mattia Grassani (the only figure linked to the club to have spoken so far),
Napoli would have followed the procedures of the protocol and on Saturday
evening they were leaving for Turin when they received a provision from the
boss cabinet of the Campania Region which prohibited his departure due to
health risk and thus canceled the trip.
On the day of the match, Lega Serie A made it known that Juventus-Napoli
should have been played regularly in Turin because the number of positivity
found in Napoli did not exceed the thresholds set by the protocol. The
protocol, however, also establishes that these rules are applied "without
prejudice to any action taken by state or local authorities." In the case
of Napoli, these measures would be represented by those who arrived from the
ASL 1 Napoli Centro and the Campania Region.
On Sunday evening, Juventus - which had no positive players
but also came from fiduciary isolation - presented themselves as per regulation
at the stadium, publishing calls and training and subsequently opening their
stands to about a thousand spectators, invited for a meeting that everyone they
knew it would never be disputed. At 21.30 the Serie A confirmed the
cancellation of the match and the team was able to leave the stadium.
Juventus president Andrea Agnelli reported in
the evening that he had received a message from Napoli president Aurelio De
Laurentiis, asking for the match to be postponed. When asked by De Laurentiis,
Agnelli replied that he wanted to abide by the Serie A regulations, a position
that was then confirmed by the official channels of the club. According to
these regulations, Napoli should therefore lose 3-0 at the table: in that case,
it would most likely appeal to all degrees of sports justice.
But there is great uncertainty about the possibility that
Napoli will be punished with a defeat at the table because if on the one hand,
the Lega Serie A has considered the conduct of the club out of the norm, on the
other, there are local authority measures that they would prevail in any venue.
Confirming this are the statements of the Deputy Minister of Health, who
reaffirmed the competence in the matter of the ASL, and the Minister of Sport
Vincenzo Spadafora, according to which "the superior interest of health
prevails overall logic".
In the next few days, therefore, the conflict between the Serie A health protocol - which until
yesterday granted football teams more permissive treatment than other areas -
and the measures ordered by state or local authorities will have to be
resolved. If the latter prevails, the postponements could become more frequent
and this could compromise the conduct of the championship: with a large number
of matches to be rescheduled, it would conflict with the international
calendar, between European cups, national matches, and European championships.
