Genoa sporting director Daniele Faggiano has claimed that this weekend’s Serie A match at home to Inter is a prohibitive one given the circumstances.
Genoa are one of the teams to have been worst affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in Serie A with them having as many as 22 positive players at one time, which led to the postponement of their fixture against Torino.
“There have been many players who could not have contact with the outside world. It wasn’t easy. I have to applaud the whole club, Doctor Gatto and the team manager,” he explained in an interview with Italian news outlet TuttoMercatoWeb ahead of the game.
“The games are all complicated. In Serie A you pay as soon as you make a mistake. We are distracted by these situations, positive, negative, weakly positive. Maran is jumping through hoops.”
He then spoke more specifically about the match against Inter and the need for players to not just test negative but to recover physically as well.
“I have to think about Genoa. We must try to recover as many people as possible but not only from a negative test point of view.
“We also need them to recover on a physical level, because staying at home for 15 days makes you lose your physical condition. The match against Inter is quite prohibitive, we are short of breath but we will try to do our best.”
Faggiano was also asked about his friendship with Inter manager Antonio Conte and he admitted that friendship will be put to the side when Genoa and Inter take on one another: “Friendship is always there, but for 90 minutes we will be adversaries.”
Genoa versus Inter is scheduled to kick off at 6pm local time on Saturday evening at Genoa’s Stadio Luigi Ferraris.