Three documents keep Juve-Napoli in the balance

Mimmo Malfitano- Valerio Piccioni

4th of October
– Milan

A fight. That runs through at least eight documents and in some cases, at least apparently, pitches them against each other. Juve and Napoli have been arguing since yesterday afternoon about the provisions of the law, sports and non-sports, which say what to do in the event of a Covid-19 positive player or team member. Napoli, after the result of the buffer for Zielinski and Elmas, did not go to Turin: “It was the ASL that stopped us.” Juve with a tweet said “we will be in the field.” The Serie A League says it can be played because the protocols say so and there is also the ghost of defeat for Gattuso’s team. While the Government does not intervene but follows the evolution of the situation.

The protocol

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A word has never been used in football in recent months: protocol. These are the ways to play Coronavirus matches on time. The Football Federation wrote it, the Technical Scientific Committee validated it on June 12. It tells you what to do in case of positivity. In summary: the subject goes to quarantine and is followed by the competent ASL, the others isolate themselves in the team’s sports hall (or in homes without contact with anyone) and carry out an examination of the swab close to the game with a result that must be given to know. within four hours before the start. The “negatives” go out and go to play, then go back to isolation: they can go out for 14 days just to train and play.

Circular

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On June 18, the Ministry of Health frames the FIGC-CTS agreement in a circular (protocol 21463) that gives the Prevention Department (that is, the local ASL) the possibility (“it can be foreseen”) to organize the quarantine soft, in short that it can be interrupted to play respecting some measures.

Uefa-Lega standard

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The protocol does not change in the following months and the championship restarts with the same provisions (except in the frequency of buffers, from one every four days to one 48 hours before the match). However, the outbreak of the Genoa outbreak forces football to cover a regulatory gap: what happens in the event of multiple positivity? The League launches a model UEFA rule: if you have 13 players available (including a goalkeeper) you must play, otherwise you lose 3-0. But with one exception available for all clubs: if there are 10 plus points or more in a team, you have the right to request a postponement once. This is how Genoa-Turin jumps. In the text of the resolution of the Lega there is also an annotation to which Napoli obviously refers: “Without prejudice to the provisions of the national and local authorities.”

Asl 2

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Meanwhile, the central field of the crisis moves to Naples. From the second swab test, Zielinski comes back positive. Yesterday, however, there was the same result for Elmas. Napoli contacts, according to the protocols and by law in case of positivity, with the local health authorities (first Napoli 2 Nord, which includes Castelvolturno, then Napoli 1 Centro) and asks how to proceed. The first answer (that of Napoli 2 Nord) is a few lines: it is written that “close contacts must observe isolation for 14 days after the date of the last exposure with the proven case. Close contacts placed in solitary confinement in their own home cannot leave the national territory. “There is no reference to the protocol or the subsequent circular of the Ministry. But the report of June 25 of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità on” monitoring of contacts “, which divides close contacts into” high risk “and” low risk “.

Asl 1

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The response from ASL Napoli 1 Centro is directed at Napoli and is aimed at the “positive case Piotr Zielinski”. Here it is said that “close contacts (of the high-risk type) identified in the epidemiological investigation should be observed and respected, also in light of the current epidemiological trend of Covid-19, with respect to which maximum attention is being paid to contain contagion – in the prevailing interest of public health – fiduciary isolation for 14 days after the date of the last exposure to infection. “This time, however, the circular of June 18 is mentioned,” in compliance ” , to the protocol with the exception of football. Which is not used. Therefore, the ASL would have used its discretion (remember the “can predict” of the circular?) to say: no repeal. For the League, the citation of the circular means instead a de facto reference to the possibility of using soft quarantine, a possibility that Napoli would not have deliberately exploited. As did other teams that played regularly after isolating the “p ositives “.

Almost on the ladder

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At this point the last mail exchange occurs. This time Napoli contacted the deputy chief of staff for the Campania region yesterday afternoon. The social doctor Raffaele Canonico asks at 5.40 pm “to receive unequivocal information on the scope of the prescriptions received” in relation to the “obligation not to leave the prescribed place” for isolation. The reply arrives at 6:25 p.m. and this time it does not mention the famous protocol circular. It is clarified that for “close contacts of people who have tested positive for Covid-19, the isolation regime carries the obligation to stay at home, with the prohibition to go out for 14 days from the last contact.” Immediately after the Naples bus to Capodichino airport backs up. De Laurentiis writes to Juve, Federcalcio, Lega and Sports Judge attaching the three documents (the two from the ASL and the one from the Campania region). But in Juve-Napoli the clash does not end and today another poisoned ping pong between emails and protocols is foreseeable.