Italian football, the criteria and the choices for the restart
Serie A will be the first to start again with odds withdrawals, tests every 48 hours and competitions behind closed doors, do you start again from the Italian cup?
The Football Federation, in agreement with the medical commission, has established a series of criteria for the restarting of sporting activities in Italy which for the moment should follow the dates indicated above. Training from 4 May and return to the field set in June, at the beginning of the month in the most optimistic of forecasts. This is the structure of the measures that will have to make it possible to allow Serie A, which will be the first to start again, to guarantee and maintain the safety of players, staff and professionals who revolve around the events of the top flight.
Workouts
Before obtaining the laissez-passer to resume training, players will have to undergo thorough fitness checks in order to establish any cardiac damage and dysfunction. They will subsequently be subjected to two swabs over a period of between 72 and 96 hours and to serological tests every two days. To make this possible, swabs and reagents will be available which according to WHO’s Walter Ricciardi will be available later this month. But in order not to burden the national health service and not give the impression that football enjoys a preferential lane in a period of absolute emergency, the League will pay the cost for tests and tampons.
Isolation
The most delicate phase of the recovery is not only linked to the restart, but also to avoid the possibility that a new stop could definitively cancel the season. For this reason, the idea of the FIGC already illustrated and taken into consideration by other team sports several times is that of permanent retirement for at least a month. Staff, players and employees will be quoted and for at least one month no one will be able to enter or leave or even return home. Referees will also have to go into retreat. The players will be divided into three bands, who has had the Covid-19, which is currently positive and who has never had it. Subsequently, all players will be tested (but it is to be understood if staff and experts will also have to undergo the same protocol) serological tests every 48 hours so that the positives can be isolated and allow others to continue the activity. If you start playing again, in addition to injuries, the other big unknown on the results would be linked to the possibility that the teams may lose their positive test players. At that point, if the others continue to play, they may not have them available for at least a month and another uncertainty is related to recovery times, since during isolation they could not train and would need other weeks to recover the condition.
Calendars and shooting criteria
In the last few days there has been talk of starting again not with the Serie A matches but by the two semi-finals of the return of the Italian Cup, Juve-Milan and Napoli-Inter. This would allow on the one hand a first check on the effectiveness of the adopted rules and on the other hand to give the League more time to organize the restart. It will be played behind closed doors and this is the only element on which there is no discussion, but it is highly probable that the northern teams will have to find a neutral field in which to play ‘at home’ as well as a venue for the withdrawal. All choices that require inspections, checks and time. Certainly the football that will start again in the first phase will only be that of Serie A, because for B there are no logistical conditions for a safe recovery, from guesthouses for withdrawal to costs for transfers. Cascading the indefinite stop of the B series also has repercussions on the C series and on the criteria for choosing promotions and relegations that should be established at the table if the championships were not completed. The risk of an infinite series of appeals blocking the transition to the next season is one of the scenarios that Italian football will try to avoid.
