Dfter the cases of Udine and Turin and the appeals of Carlo Ancelotti, on the chants of discrimination (racial and territorial) the world of football stands firm and from today's federal council comes the indication of the president of the FIGC, Gabriele Gravina: the regulation that provides for the suspension of matches will be applied to the letter. “I spoke about it on Saturday evening with the president of Aia Nicchi and the Serie A designator, Rizzoli, inviting them to strictly apply the expected protocol”. A rule that has existed since 2013, when the then AC Milan player Boateng was heavily targeted in a friendly. “The rules are clear,” Gravina recalled. And they include a series of announcements from the speaker throughout the stadium: “There is the first announcement – explains the head of Italian football – in the second the teams gather in midfield. If you continue (with the chants, ed.) you go to the locker room and then announce that the match has been suspended." However, since it was introduced, this rule has never led to the suspension of a match: “We report it,” Gravina specified, “but then it’s not easy to get thousands of people out of the stadium. After the suspension of the match, the problem then falls to the public safety official", the only one with the power to permanently suspend a match for public order reasons. No one is officially talking about it, in via Allegri, but the eyes of the football world are now focused on Atalanta-Napoli, in exactly one week. Meanwhile, the decisions of the sports judge are expected tomorrow, including on last Saturday's chants. This morning, Nicola Rizzoli spoke about the hard line on 'Radio anch'io sport': "there is an official procedure, established by FIFA and UEFA, to punish episodes of racism and territorial discrimination: the referee must stop the match to broadcast a public announcement". The next step “is to stop the game again, call the players to midfield and make another announcement. If the conditions are not met, the referee sends the teams back to the locker rooms, the match is suspended and the ball passes to the person responsible for public order who decides whether to suspend the match." After last week's position at the Viminale, with Deputy Prime Minister Salvini and Undersecretary Giorgetti, here is the crackdown also regarding violence against referees. We are moving from a sanction that was at the discretion of the sports judge, but in any case not less than eight days of disqualification, to a guaranteed minimum of one year of suspension for anyone who is the protagonist of an aggression towards a referee. The case exploded again following the aggression towards the referee of the amateurs, Riccardo Bernardini, of the Rome section. “Zero tolerance? No, minus one – thunders the president of the AIA, Nicchi – It is a national problem, not just that of the AIA. We are the victims." Same leitmotif as Gravina: “We have to write a definitive law on violence – concluded the number one in via Allegri – We have to work on it, in a few hours there will be a definitive law.
Article published on November 26, 2018 - 17:50
