Soccer-Italian football leaders ask government to rethink medical protocol

Italian football leaders have asked the government to reconsider the medical protocol it has authorized as a condition for allowing Serie A to re-start after the coronavirus stoppage. The Serie A league said after a meeting with the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) and representatives of team doctors on Friday that parts of the protocol were "difficult to implement".

Serie A is hoping to resume on June 13 but the government has not yet decided if and when it can go ahead. It has, however, authorized clubs to begin team training from Monday. The main sticking point has been the Minister of Health's insistence that, if a player tests positive for the coronavirus, the entire team would have to go into quarantine for 14 days.

The Serie A clubs and the players' association says that this is not practical as it would take only a handful of positive tests in different teams to cause a flurry of postponed games. They argue that, in countries where the re-start of the league has been authorized, only the infected player needs to be isolated.

The clubs also want the government to drop a requirement that teams and their staff spend 15 days isolated in a training retreat before the league re-starts. Serie A said that Friday's meeting took place in "an atmosphere of active collaboration."

"The points of the protocol that are difficult to implement were analyzed and some tweaks were constructively elaborated in order to solve problems," it said in a statement. It said the meeting had ended with a proposal for alterations to the protocol which would be submitted to the sports and health ministries.

The protocol was initially drawn up by the FIGC but was described as insufficient by Sports Minister Vincenzo Spadafora and adjusted by the government. "We had said many times that certain protocols were not feasible and we are pleased to see that the Serie A is behind us," said former Italy national team doctor Enrico Castellacci, the president of the Italian Football Doctors Association. 

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