Rome (AFP)

No training for team sports before May 18: the Italian government cooled Sunday the Serie A clubs, who hoped to return to the fields much earlier to end the season and see dangerously tighten the possible recovery schedule.

The Gazzetta dello Sport tells it on Monday morning: in Appiano Gentile, the Inter Milan preparation center, the five pitches and the facilities - changing rooms, weight rooms - had been meticulously prepared for an individual resumption of training from 4 May .

But by presenting Sunday the details of "phase 2", which should see Italy gradually emerge from the confinement imposed since March 10 in the face of the progression of the coronavirus, the head of government Giuseppe Conte showered this project and made a distinction between individual and team sports.

From May 4, swimmer Federica Pellegrini, cyclist Vincenzo Nibali or tennis player Fabio Fognini can resume training. For Cristiano Ronaldo, Romelu Lukaku or Chris Smalling, however, the doors of the training centers remain closed.

This will be the case until May 18, warned Conte, while presenting himself as "a football enthusiast" and leaving to the world of "calcio" the hope of a resumption of the championship, stopped for a Sassuolo-Brescia match on March 9.

- "Two speed" -

A few minutes later, his Minister of Sports Vincenzo Spadafora, with notoriously cool relations with the leaders of the federation and the League, was even more careful.

May 18? "We will see," he said, about a date that does not appear in the government decree published on Monday.

The minister, who said he was not "an enemy of football", spoke of "shortcomings" in the medical protocol for recovery which was presented to him late last week by the football authorities.

The Sunday evening announcements were nonetheless greeted with some surprise by the sports media. Among the less severe, the Gazzetta was thus surprised by a "two-speed recovery".

Tuttosport evokes for its part "a cold shower" and a minister who "continues to snub the recovery of the football business". The Corriere dello Sport, it goes straight to the point and title "The joke".

- Towards play-offs? -

Before putting their players back to work, the clubs will in any case have to redo their accounts to try to clean up by the end of July the 12 days missing (plus four late matches) to finish Serie A.

The calendar is indeed now ultra-tight, especially since we do not know for now how the training will be organized if they are actually authorized from May 18: individual? In small groups? With all the staff?

The objective of resuming competition in early June has in any case become untenable. The new horizon is now Wednesday June 10 or the weekend June 13-14. Beyond these two dates, it would no longer be possible to play all the matches remaining to be played.

Left aside for a few weeks, the hypothesis of a plan B in the form of play-offs to allocate the title and qualifying places for Europe and decide on relegated teams, could therefore become topical again.

If necessary, any change in formula must be communicated to UEFA by 25 May at the latest.

In their difficult endeavor, Serie A clubs may not be able to count on the great support of public opinion, marked by the death of almost 27,000 people since the start of the epidemic.

According to a poll published Sunday by the AGI agency, two out of three Italians are indeed hostile to a resumption of football competitions.

© 2020 AFP