Salernitana’s Serie A match with Fiorentina saw kick-off delayed by six minutes and some unusual scenes caused by excess confetti.
There were 20,000 people at the Stadio Arechi for this afternoon’s encounter and enthusiasm was sky high after back-to-back victories over Sampdoria and Udinese.
With this in mind, the ultras handed out 40,000 bags of confetti to be thrown as the teams walked out for the start of the match.
However, the local authorities could sense trouble and repeatedly warned the crowd with announcements over the loudspeaker not to throw it towards the pitch.
Although only a small minority of the tons of shredded paper was indeed flung, it was still enough to take it all across the pitch and cause six minutes of delay.
People with leaf-blowers and garbage pickers scrambled around the turf gathering the loose bits of paper while the players tried to keep themselves warmed up with passing exercises.
💜 Just when I thought 6:30 might be too early for a leaf blower 🙄 Good thing these guys weren’t at Argentina ’78…#SalernitanaFiorentina pic.twitter.com/EMiVWc54MR
— James Campbell Taylor (@jamestaylor) April 24, 2022