Inter will play the Supercoppa Italiana against Juventus on Saudi Arabia, with one of two possible dates set for the fixture.
This according to Serie A President Paolo Dal Pino, who spoke about plans for the fixture in an interview with Italian broadcaster Radio Anch’io Lo Sport, stating that the possible dates for the fixture were narrowed down to December 22 and January 5.
As last season’s Scudetto winners Inter will face off against Coppa Italia winners Juventus in the Supercoppa, though fitting the fixture into the packed calendar for each club has proved tricky.
Considerations of time are crucial, while the location of the fixture will be outside of Italy to increase its commercial potential.
The Nerazzurri will hope that the date is settled quickly and that they can prepare for participation in it and for the other challenges to come.
“It is not yet defined,” Dal Pino stated of the dates for the fixture. “We have two dates, December 22 and January 5. We are talking to the representatives of Saudi Arabia. We have a contract with them so we should play it there. They had not exercised the option to play there this year, but now they’re asking us to do it.”
He went on, “From our point of view it is fundamental to honour the contract, and everything that allows us to enhance the competition is positive. Our CEO is taking care of it, I am sure we will have a solution soon.”
Dal Pino also had words about the problem of racism in football stadiums, which has been re-emphasized by an incident in which Inter wing-back Denzel Dumfries appeared to be on the receiving end of racist chants by Lazio fans on Saturday.
The President made clear that the priority of the league is to ban individuals responsible for racism in football stadiums for life.
“Anything that is racism and discrimination is horrible,” he stated. “It is not part of us. It is a problem that is seen not only in stadiums, where we see individual and sadly repeated cases of people who should not enter stadiums.”
“There are two aspects,” he went on, “the first is communication, and we campaigned with UNAR, then there are sanctions. As teams we created a commission that met last Wednesday to ban entrance to stadiums for those who stain the game with racism.”
He explained, “When buying a ticket there is a rating system that allows a club to exclude racist stains from their stadium. This person can be excluded from that stadium but not from others, by law. We are making sure that they cannot do so even in other stadiums.”
“Then there is technology,” he continued, “our new centre in Lissone is the most advanced in Europe for the production of football content. UEFA and FIFA do not even have it. We have a VAR room like no other.”
He explained, “We would like there to be a room specifically to help eradicate discrimination. We are verifying with the Ministry of the Interior, without violating privacy, the possibility of gathering supporting evidence in this way, in order to be able to identify the culprit of racism and ban them from stadiums for life.”
