Football in the time of Covid. The pandemic is having devastating effects on all sectors and even the ball is obviously not immune. We are not yet at the levels of last spring, when the most popular sport in the world seemed to be about to stop indefinitely, but things are certainly getting worse day after day, with the only certainty that nothing, absolutely nothing, is safer. And say that the past championship ended without problems, with 20 teams playing 12 days (13 with stoppages) and the Italian Cup in just over 40 days, without forgetting the European cups, concluded in a reduced format, okay, but still brought home against any negative forecast.
The current season had started well with the final of the European Super Cup with the public (Budapest), so much so that even in Italy the debate had moved to the stadiums and their imminent reopening, albeit with limited capacity. Only 15 days have passed since that evening when Bayern lifted yet another trophy, yet everything has changed. The infections have increased significantly and even football, from the few cases of a few weeks ago, has found itself overwhelmed by a virus that is not necessarily dangerous (the players involved, at the moment, are all asymptomatic or with a few lines of fever), but nonetheless very contagious. The well-known facts of Juventus-Naples, probably, could have been avoided with a little common sense (proof of this is the prevarication of the Sports Judge Mastrandrea, in evident difficulty in pronouncing the sentence), but the Genoa case remains sculpted and questions the effectiveness of the Protocol, therefore the entire championship: if a team undergoes checks the day before a match and then, when it is over, discovers that it has 22 positives, the system obviously has some rather big flaws.
To all this then we must add the usual Italian chaos, which causes a local ASL to decide differently from the colleagues scattered throughout the boot, creating a precedent that is difficult to manage, whatever the decision of the sports justice. In this break weekend, with players traveling around the world and the flurry of infections on the rise, one wonders, for example, what will happen next week, when Genoa will have to go to Verona with Primavera (the 17 positives have certainly not recovered , the others cannot train but the regulation provides for the postponement only for the first match, after which the 0-3 are triggered at the table), or with the Milan derby, given the 5 cases of Inter (at Skriniar, Bastoni, Nainggolan and Gagliardini was joined by Radu) and the 2 from Milan (Duarte and, since yesterday, Gabbia, while Ibrahimovic has communicated his clinical recovery to everyone): the regulation provides that the aforementioned are isolated and the others can play, but the ASL of Milan could also follow the example of that of Naples, bypassing, in a completely lawful way, the Protocol drawn up in May by the FIGC, the Ministry of Health and the Cts.
It's difficult to think of going on like this, also because the regularity of the tournament is also affected: an aspect that, at the moment, is of little interest, but nonetheless important in what still remains a sporting competition. Solutions are urgently needed to save a game that we like, but which above all represents the fourth largest industry in Italy, with a total turnover of 4,7 billion euros, a socio-economic impact of 3 and tax and social security revenues of 1,2 ,XNUMX. Mind-boggling numbers, too often forgotten (at least in appearance) by various government officials, starting with ministers Speranza and Spadafora, not really allies of football. Now one wonders what to do and some ideas inevitably begin to circulate in the salons that count. The most advocated, at the moment, is to go on like this, respecting a Protocol which, in the rest of Europe (including France, England and Spain, countries with far worse numbers than ours), is working without our hitches.
However, if that weren't possible, the only solution would be the so-called "bubble", i.e. isolating players, technical staff and managers as much as possible from the rest of the world and thus allowing the championship to take place in safety. Woe, however, to refer to the NBA model: it is one thing to close the teams in an isolated place for 3 months (with very high costs and huge sacrifices on the part of all the professionals), another thing is to think of doing the same thing for almost a year, moreover without the possibility of use similar structures, especially since international commitments would certainly not be compatible. In short, the American bubble is simply impossible to replicate, but it can be a starting point for a similar European one, less stringent but still effective. In any case, solutions are urgently needed, otherwise the balloon will stop spinning for the second time in a few months. And with him also the 250 people who, directly or indirectly, live there.
