Gabriele Gravina, the president of the Italian football federation, has reiterated that he cannot rule out the possibility of the Italian football season having to carry on into July.
Italian football, like almost every other European league, is currently on hold due to the global Coronavirus pandemic and whilst all 55 member associations committed to concluding their domestic campaigns by the end of June at a meeting with European football’s governing body UEFA earlier this week, Gravina has admitted this might not be possible.
There are some clubs who still have 12 Serie A games to play whilst others have 13 left and a number of clubs have cup competition commitments too which only makes things even harder when it comes to trying to work out a schedule.
“When the European Championship’s were moved to 2021, we set ourselves a series of dates to understand when to start. The idea is to start on May 3 because with a few midweek games we can end on June 30, but we can not rule out playing into July,” Gravina remarked in an interview with Italian radio station Radio Punto Nuovo earlier on today.
“It is not easy to schedule all the matches. We will work on it and put in motion all possible mechanisms with the necessary measures by the government and all the competent bodies.”
He then spoke on the possibility of the league having to start with games played behind closed doors.
“We can not exclude it. The hypothesis we are working on is an initial phase behind closed doors until we have guarantees related to the protection of the health of the players. Football must get out of this complicated situation.”
In conclusion he discussed how television rights have been affected by the recent events.
“Television rights are fundamental and there is a very significant amount of money attached to them. We will do everything possible to ensure that we comply with the contractual clauses.”
