The soccer landscapes of the pandemic already extend their desolation beyond the empty stadiums.
Juventus Turin is, for the moment, the first team in Europe to have won a match due to the non-appearance of its rival due to covid-19.
This Sunday at 8:45 p.m. he jumped onto the Allianz Stadium pitch, without spectators or rival.
It was the latest chapter in the impact of the coronavirus on Italian Serie A.
Naples, which had to travel to Turin to play the match and did not do so as the regional health authorities forbade it due to several positives in its squad, will surely lose the match in the dispatches by 0-3, as the rules mark when one of the two teams did not show up.
But the chaotic situation that is beginning to be experienced in the Italian First Division, which the Minister of Sports, Vincenzo Spadafora, has defined as "worrying", does not make it clear if the result will be final.
The rules of the protocol of the covid do not finish clarifying a conflict that the League and the federation must resolve.
On Saturday afternoon the news broke in Naples.
The health service of the Campania region decreed that the team could not travel to Turin the next day because of the three positives registered in its staff.
The formation trained by Gennaro Gattuso played last week against Genoa, who attended the match when several players were already positive despite having passed the tests.
The game was played normally, but on Monday the results gave light to the origin of the outbreak: 22 positives in the team, 17 of them players.
The possibility of contagion set off the alarm in what had been his rival last day.
The Neapolitans registered the positives for coronavirus from the Pole Piotr Zielinski and the Macedonian Eljif Elmas, in addition to a staff member.
The club, in accordance with the sanitary protocol of the Italian Football Federation (FIGC), subjected the squad to three rounds of coronavirus tests, but the health center responsible for controlling the club decreed that the entire team should remain in isolation.
A decision taken outside the club, owned by the film producer Aurelio De Laurentiis, who will now see how the match is counted as a defeat.
The problem is that the supposed veto to travel, by which Naples asks that the match be postponed, collides head-on with the rules established by UEFA (if there are 13 players available, the match must be played) and Seria A (you can suspend when there are at least 10 positives).
So now the conflict will have to be resolved and decide if the game is counted as lost for Naples or if another date is sought.
The League statement is clear: it does not believe that the health authority's communication included a travel ban to Turin and assumes that it should be counted as a defeat.
Until the last moment it was not known if the game was postponed or if Gattuso's team was considered lost.
The Minister of Health, Roberto Speranza, assured that, in any case, surely it would not be played.
Still, he regretted that in Italy they talk "so much about football."
“I say this with respect for an important part of the country's economy: I know that there are interests and so many people around football that must be respected.
But the important things now are others: the work of the hospitals, the toilets and the care of our schools.
So a little less football and more schools, if possible, ”he complained.