Serie A clubs unanimous in desire to finish season

Italy's Serie A clubs on Friday reiterated their unanimous desire to complete the football season interrupted amid the coronavirus crisis. The emergency Lega Serie A assembly via video of the 20 top flight clubs came after Sports Minister Vincenzo Spadafora this week said the chances of restarting were "increasingly narrow".

Lega Serie A president Paolo Dal Pino stated "his openness to a dialogue with the government from a constructive and collaborative perspective, obtaining on this position the full agreement of all the clubs". The top flight clubs have repeatedly insisted that they want to finish the 2019-20 campaign which has been suspended since March 9 amid the health crisis which has killed nearly 28,000 people in Italy.

Clubs would like to resume training on May 18 at the latest and start playing again in the weekend of June 13-14. Italian Football Federation (FIGC) president Gabriele Gravina had said a cancellation would be "the death of Italian football" and that he would "never sign for the end of the championships".

Gravina estimates that Italian football would suffer losses of up to 800 million euros ($870 million) in TV rights, sponsors, ticketing and marketing in the event of the season being cancelled. On Thursday, Spadafora told public broadcaster RAI that the government would help "as much as is possible" to make sure that football's finances are "damaged as little as possible", remarks which Dal Pino said he "appreciated".