Rome (AFP)
The Italian government will allow top athletes to resume training in May, the 4th for individual sports, the 18th for collective disciplines, the Prime Minister announced on Sunday.
As of May 4, "training will be allowed, but without assembly and in camera" for individual sports, said Giuseppe Conte during an address intended to detail his plan to restart the country.
On the other hand, for collective sports, this "green light" will only be given on May 18, he added.
A decision to resume competitions interrupted by the confinement of the country, however, was not taken.
A national passion in Italy, professional football has repeatedly repeated its desire to end the current season. Thursday, the federation said its determination to resume competition and its desire to postpone "until August 2 the end of the 2019-2020 sports season".
But according to a poll released Sunday by the AGI agency, two out of three Italians are hostile to a resumption of football competitions because of the health situation in this country which is one of the hardest hit in the world by the pandemic, with nearly 27,000 dead.
One in two remains hostile to it even if it had to be done behind closed doors. And this majority opposition also concerns football supporters.
This Thursday, the president of the German League Christian Seifert indicated that the Bundesliga, stopped since mid-March, was "ready" to resume on May 9, if the German authorities gave the green light.
UEFA, for its part, has announced that places in European competitions should be allocated to "sporting merit", settling a question which has agitated the national championships since the suspension of matches in mid-March.
© 2020 AFP