Rome protest: here is the text of the letter to the League

Following the League’s decision to postpone Juventus-Napoli until April 7, Roma officially requested the postponement of the match against Napoli, scheduled for Sunday, March 21. Here is the text of the letter addressed to the League itself:

Dear Sirs: We are surprised to learn of the publication of your Official Communiqué N ° 219 with which the “recovery of the first leg of the 3rd matchday of Serie A TIM Juventus-Napoli is postponed”, initially scheduled for the 17th day of March 2021 at 6:45 p.m., as established in its previous Official Letter No. 205 of March 3, 2021. From the same Official Letter No. 219 of March 12, 2021, we learned that the postponement decision was adopted by the President of the Lega Nazionale Professionisti Serie A, “at the request of the clubs Juventus FC and SSC Napoli”. We are aware that, in accordance with paragraph 2 of Art. 29 of the Statute-Regulations of the LNPA in force, the President may order the change of date of an official match at the request of one or both of the companies involved. However, from paragraph 4 of the same Art. 29, it follows that requests must be made in writing at least 15 days before the date on which the championship match should take place. Therefore, we ask you to know when these requests were sent by the two companies in question, in order to check the regularity of the obligations. We ask you, above all, to let us know the appropriate reasons of sporting interest which, as is well known, should be the basis of your provision for an exception. At present, in fact, it is completely devoid of adequate justification except the implicit one of favoring the SSC Napoli calendar that had to meet with the undersigned company the following Sunday March 21 For you, as you are responsible for managing the championship calendar, you are clear that with your decision you are exempting SSC Napoli from the commitment to play the game against Juventus, already officially scheduled for March 17, giving them more time to prepare for the subsequent match against AS Roma and a saving grace for its players (some of whom, in addition, under a warning) while, as you know, AS Roma itself faces on March 18 in the Europa League evening game in Kiev , Ukraine, with the return expected late at night between Thursday and Friday; all this, however, without having a chance to play on Monday due to the UEFA window set for February 22. Obviously, you were aware of all this information even before the decision to move the game, which in the absence of clear sporting reasons, appears to have been made with the sole intention of providing an unfair (and peaceful) advantage to SSC Napoli at expense. of AS Roma with evident conditioning of the regular result of the Championship. In the absence of a response from you regarding only one of the previous requests, the violation of the aforementioned Art. 29 would therefore be evident. Therefore, we trust your understanding and the urgent adoption by you of the most appropriate corrective measures. Otherwise, we reserve all actions to protect the undersigned Company and Shareholders and our Fans, in the most appropriate offices and jurisdictions. As an alternative, given the proximity of the second leg of the Shakhtar Donetsk-Roma Europa League round of 16, which will be played on March 18, 2021 at 6:55 p.m., we are making a formal request for postponement right now, to a date for It will be determined from the match of day 28 of the TIM Rome-Naples Serie A Championship, currently scheduled for March 21, 2021, at 8:45 p.m. “.