Rome (AFP)
The Naples team did not appear on the lawn of Juventus Turin on Sunday evening, in this shock of the Italian Football Championship maintained by the Italian League despite the two cases of Covid-19 in the Neapolitan workforce .
Naples, which has assured that it has not obtained permission from the local health authorities to make this trip, risks a 3-0 defeat on the green carpet, under the rules adopted this week by the sports authorities.
Naples is the first team not to appear on the pitch, for a match maintained, due to the coronavirus, in the five major European leagues.
There had already been a case of withdrawal in August during a preliminary round match of the Champions League: the Kosovar club Drita could not play his match and had lost match against Linfield (Northern Ireland).
The Juventus players, who have been preparing for the match all day as if nothing had happened, arrived at the stadium about an hour before kick-off, according to images posted by the club on Twitter.
According to the Italian League, the existing protocol to supervise Serie A matches in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic should have allowed Naples to be able to play despite the two positive cases.
In a letter sent to the League, published by the Gazzetta dello sport, the Neapolitan president Aurelio de Laurentiis for his part assured that, despite the federal protocol, his club has not been authorized to leave Naples from local health authorities.
He asked in this letter the "postponement of the meeting to another date".
Italian football was caught up this week by the coronavirus pandemic, with seventeen players testing positive at Genoa.
The Genoa-Torino match scheduled for Saturday has therefore been postponed.
© 2020 AFP