Sassuolo v Inter will be postponed after a COVID outbreak in the Nerazzurri squad, but a battle is breaking out between the Lega Serie A, FIGC and CONI over the protocol.
Danilo D’Ambrosio tested positive on Tuesday, with Samir Handanovic joining him on Wednesday, and today another two teammates Matias Vecino and Stefan de Vrij also tested positive.
The speed of the spread is very similar to the situation that emerged at Torino a couple of weeks ago, most likely because it involves the so-called ‘English variant’ of COVID.
Sassuolo v Inter will be postponed after a COVID outbreak in the Nerazzurri squad, but a battle is breaking out between the Lega Serie A, FIGC and CONI over the protocol.
Danilo D’Ambrosio tested positive on Tuesday, with Samir Handanovic joining him on Wednesday, and today another two teammates Matias Vecino and Stefan de Vrij also tested positive.
The speed of the spread is very similar to the situation that emerged at Torino a couple of weeks ago, most likely because it involves the so-called ‘English variant’ of COVID.
This set off alarm bells with the ASL (local health authority) in Milan, who ordered the Inter squad to suspend all activity until midnight on Sunday and remain in quarantine.
Considering the game is scheduled for Saturday evening, it is therefore objectively impossible to play the match.
The Lega Serie A itself has not yet announced the postponement, because after the Torino debacle, the battle is again erupting around the protocol.
When it was drawn up last summer following the restart, the idea was for most matches to go ahead as long as there were still 13 players available, including one goalkeeper.
There was always the inclusion of a failsafe ‘free pass’ written in, so clubs could ask for one game to be postponed for several cases, but no more than that.
Inter should be able to activate that free pass without issue.
The concern here is the same thing that happened with Lazio-Torino, namely that the ASL has over-ruled the Lega Serie A.
This was only ever meant to be an emergency situation, but the English variant and a surge in cases throughout the country have made the ASL more likely to intervene in football.
There were two main problems with the Lazio-Torino situation that caused chaos, the first being that it was a midweek round, so they did not have time to sit out the quarantine before another fixture came along.
The other was that the Lega Serie A tried to stamp its authority on the organisation of football fixtures, going against the guidance of the FIGC (Italian Football Federation) and the CONI (Italian Olympic Committee).
This was already confirmed when Napoli won their appeal against the one-point penalty and automatic 3-0 defeat for not travelling to the Juventus Stadium in October.
That case was at least somewhat debatable, but the Torino and Inter situations – where the ASL clearly and unequivocally ordered the squad into quarantine until after the kick-off time – leaves the Lega Serie A fighting a losing battle.