news agency
Turin
A ghostly atmosphere awaits the biggest game of the Serie A season on Sunday as Juventus and Inter Milan prepare for a title tussle behind closed doors while Italy grapples with the deadly coronavirus outbreak.
Just 500 people will witness Antonio Conte return to Juve, where he won three Serie A titles as a coach and the Champions League as a player. The loudest noise at a game that would have attracted a raucous sell-out 40,000 crowd at the Allianz Stadium in Turin will be the voices of screaming players as the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and Romelu Lukaku battle it out for Italy’s two best-supported clubs.
The coronavirus has now killed 148 people in Italy, the highest number of deaths in any European country.
Serie A on Friday listed a host of new rules that clubs must abide by, including the installation of scanners to check the temperature of the restricted number of authorised people entering the stadium.
Journalists at games will have to keep at least two metres apart, while on Sunday there will be no mixed zone or press conferences before or after the match.
– Inter anger –
Bustling Milan has been left deserted after the region of Lombardy was hardest hit by the outbreaK. The Juventus v Inter match, known in Italy as the Derby d’Italia for its historic importance, was supposed to be played last weekend but was postponed as COVID-19 caused havoc across the country.
That decision sparked a row between Serie A and Inter, who were livid at what they saw as completely random scheduling decisions — leading to Inter’s Chinese chairman Steven Zhang calling the league’s president Paolo Dal Pino a “clown”.
Zhang’s outburst irritated the other clubs, who were fed up of Inter criticising any decision the league made in a chaotic situation, with Napoli among those praising Dal Pino’s work.
“First Inter demanded to play behind closed doors, then with fans, and then they wanted to play their match with Sampdoria (postponed the previous week) before Juventus,” said Roma CEO Guido Fienga.
“What we all want is to protect people’s health but also ensure the season progresses.”
The league had put the game at Turin’s Allianz Stadium back over concerns of broadcasting a marquee match — originally set to be played at the same time as La Liga’s El Clasico — against the backdrop of an empty stadium, hoping that virus-related restrictions would be lifted.
However Wednesday’s government decree which forced all sporting events in Italy behind closed doors until at least April 3 meant that the matches had to be played with no fans or risk the season not finishing.
The clash is one of six postponed matches being played this weekend as Serie A tries to put some order to a schedule that has been thrown into chaos by the spread of the virus.
After this weekend Inter will still have to play Sampdoria at San Siro in order to recover their fixtures and that game is yet to be assigned a date due to the difficulty of finding a space in Inter’s schedule.
