The Omicron wave creates chaos in Serie A. Four games will not be played and Juve-Napoli, for which there is the ok of the Neapolitan ASL, will be staged with one of the two suitors decimated by positivity and quarantines. The championship that restarts from the second round on the day of the Epiphany with stadiums with reduced capacity and the obligation of ffp2 masks for the fans is dealing with the exponential increase in infections and the blocks of the health authorities. Serie A tries to hold its position in front of the offensive of the Omicron variant that invests players and staff but already loses the pieces, even if the League – which met in the evening for an extraordinary Council – is compact in defending the championship and continuing with the races . A new Uefa-style protocol will be drawn up: with 13 players available (including a goalkeeper) there will be an obligation to play, even by fishing from the Primavera. In addition, the League will appeal to the TAR against the measures of the ASL that will not take into account the provisions on quarantines of 30 December last.
Tomorrow, however, Atalanta-Turin, Fiorentina-Udinese, Salernitana-Venice and Bologna-Inter will not be played, the first two for the blocking of the transfer of grenade and Friulians, the other two for the quarantine imposed by the ASL. The Campania region chose not to show up, not even with the youth teams. Napoli got the green light to play the match against Juventus in Turin. In a climate of growing uncertainty, between conflicting decisions of the ASL and concern of technicians and players, during the day there were also rumors about a possible new draconian squeeze on the championship, and not just on capacity. Meanwhile, after Serie B and Lega Pro, even the Amateurs have postponed the days, setting the resumption on 23 January.
The eve of the restart passed between announcements of new positivity and some healing, but in the evening the ‘sentences’ of the health authorities arrived one after another. The Asl Città di Torino, after having found an outbreak of Covid in the team group, blocked the grenades before leaving for Bergamo. The eight positives are in isolation, the whole group will go to quarantine for five days and therefore Toro will not be able to play even Sunday’s home game with Fiorentina. The same decision was taken in Udine, with the Friuli Centrale health authority which essentially prohibited Udinese from playing both the match against Fiorentina at the Franchi tomorrow and the one against Sunday against Atalanta.
Salernitana announced that tomorrow afternoon she will not show up at the Arechi stadium for the match against Venice. The Campania players have eleven positives in the team group and the ASL of Salerno has put another 25 people in isolation. The club had asked Lega Serie A to postpone the match which was not agreed. Same thing did Bologna, stopped by the ASL for tomorrow’s matches with Inter and on Sunday with Cagliari. A package of referrals that will be complicated to manage in an already very busy schedule. In Turin, on the other hand, Juventus-Napoli will be played as scheduled, a stone of the scandal in the last championship, which first led to the 3-0 defeat of the Azzurri and then to the overturning of the decision with the match that was played months later.
Today the Neapolitan ASL allowed the Azzurri to leave even with the outbreak in place in the team group: but the close contacts that had no green pass (Zielinski, Lobotka, Rrhamani) went into quarantine. Similar cases for Verona, which with seven infected instead left regularly for La Spezia. The coaches try to get by by putting on the field as best as possible but they sometimes have different visions about the effects of the emergency. Josè Mourinho denies that we can speak of a ‘falsified championship’, given that even this season many teams have been missing several important players at the same time due to various injuries. The Portuguese, then, does not foresee problems for unvaccinated players: “We will respect the decisions of the government”. But in the meantime it seems that the only Giallorossi in that condition has decided to change his mind and undergo the treatment. Simone Inzaghi believes instead that this situation “is not good for football, it is difficult to prepare for matches”. “We need a clear rule – says Italian – defining the number of infected people beyond which the game cannot be played”. Now the ball will pass to the sports judge, who will have to decide whether to inflict defeats at the table to those who have not played: the precedent of Juve-Napoli induces caution, and in Lega di A it is already known that the dates for the recoveries of the non-committed teams in Europe there are. As long as the omicron wave doesn’t stretch too much.