Italian Sporting Minister Spadafora: “Not Certain That Training Will Resume On May 4th”

In an interview with Italian radio station Radio Rai 2 tonight, Vincenzo Spadafora, the Italian minister for sport and youth policies, has spoken about the possible resumption of the Serie A season.

The 2019/20 Serie A season has been on hold for just over a month now due to the ongoing global Coronavirus pandemic and Spadafora, who has been in office since 2018, admits he cannot say for sure if training or the season itself will be able to resume.

“How can we restart? I start from the fact that sport is not only football and that football is not only Serie A, even if it is a big industry from an economic point of view,” he started.

“I will have a meeting on Wednesday with the FIGC who will show me the medical protocol which is mainly for training. Today I absolutely cannot say for certain whether the season will resume or if training will resume on May 4.”

Juventus, Parma and Roma have all reached agreements with their employees with regards to wage cuts and Spadafora was asked what he thinks the remaining 17 Serie A teams will opt to do.

“I don’t get involved in such things. The world of football, especially that of Serie A, is a world that lives very differently from the rest of sport and Italians.

“Each club is bargaining differently. I hope that the world of football can start again, but a restart date cannot be indicated if there are no certainties for the country.

“For now we know that from May 4 the world will gradually start to reopen, but the resumption of training does not mean automatic resumption of matches.

“I will evaluate the resumption of training very carefully and hope that it can resume, but resuming it does not mean that the season is automatically restarted too.”

In conclusion he was asked on the prospect of Serie A games being aired for free on television if the season does indeed resume with games being played behind closed doors without fans in attendance.

“I tried to do this in the period of maximum emergency, I had a heated confrontation with the CEO of Sky and the president of the Serie A League Dal Pino.

“The topic is thorny, when the world of football does not want to decide it says that it is the government that must do it, then when the government tries to decide football it wants to claim its autonomy. We will certainly consider this.”