An appeal from five clubs has been sent to the Italian Government in a bid to resolve the chaos around Serie B, but Virtus Entella wouldn’t sign it.
The situation is reaching critical point after a series of conflicting and contradictory legal rulings.
This chaos erupted over the summer when Avellino, Bari and Cesena went bankrupt, but rather than replace them with sides from Serie C, the FIGC and Lega Serie B opted to simply reduce the division to 19 clubs.
An appeal from five clubs has been sent to the Italian Government in a bid to resolve the chaos around Serie B, but Virtus Entella wouldn’t sign it.
The situation is reaching critical point after a series of conflicting and contradictory legal rulings.
This chaos erupted over the summer when Avellino, Bari and Cesena went bankrupt, but rather than replace them with sides from Serie C, the FIGC and Lega Serie B opted to simply reduce the division to 19 clubs.
Appeals are continuing to come in from Pro Vercelli, Ternana, Siena, Novara, Catania and Virtus Entella.
Today there was a potential turning point, as the CONI’s Collegio di Garanzia dello Sport “recognised the legitimacy” of an appeal from Entella, who maintain Cesena’s 15-point penalty for false accounting – in a scandal that cost Chievo a three-point penalty – should be valid from the 2017-18 season rather than 2018-19.
If that were the case, Entella would have avoided relegation into Serie C.
However, this creates a huge knock-on effect, because Entella have already played in Serie C this season.
The Lega Pro/Serie C authorities announced this evening that as a consequence of the decision, they were suspending all Virtus Entella games until further notice.
This evening, a document was sent to the Italian Government requesting a special decree to “wipe out all the current appeals and, consequently, reintegrate the clubs excluded from Serie B.”
This was sent by Pro Vercelli, Ternana, Siena, Novara, Catania and Virtus Entella.
However, a few hours later, Entella released their own statement insisting “the document was presented to us, but we decided not to put our names to it.”
If all these clubs were to be reintegrated, Serie B would have to go from 19 clubs to 25 and the Serie C fixture list completely revamped too.
Week 4 of the Serie B season is meant to kick off on Friday evening with Benevento-Salernitana.