The Italian Football championship had to be stopped

Competitions are situations in which teams and athletes are confronted with the guarantee that they are organized to allow each participant to compete in a context of equal opportunities for all. Otherwise, beyond the skills expressed on the field by the teams, some will be facilitated while others will be disadvantaged by the changes made in the organizational context.

In Italy, due to the spread of the coronavirus, the Lega Serie A and the Federazione Gioco Calcio have had to take decisions in relation to the conduct of the matches, being able to choose between different options.

It was decided to postpone some matches until mid-May, in the geographical area most affected by the virus and to allow the others to take place. I am not discussing the need not to let them play, at cause they would have put at risk the health of citizens in the affected areas, this is a choice that is up to the football managers on the basis of expert advice (Ministry of Health).

The football managers’ choices to postpone certain matches do not guarantee equal opportunities for the championship because the level of preparation of the teams today is certainly not what they will have in more than two months’ time, so that the advantage of being at the top of the league table or chasing them will not be real but will be conditioned by waiting for the results of the postponed matches, because it is very likely that the teams involved will have to play a large number of matches in May which will affect their performances, because the results of the international cups will affect the teams’ attitudes on the pitch.

In my opinion, the football executives have made the worst decision they could have made, further increasing the climate of suspicion that still continues to be present in Italian football. It would have been more appropriate, in order to guarantee the regularity of the championship, to suspend it for one or more weeks until the health situation had returned to be safe.