The confrontation that brought Italian club Atalanta with its host Valencia in the first leg of the Champions League final was not an ordinary match, as it witnessed a landslide victory (4-1) for the Italian club, which is participating for the first time in the Champions League, but it coincided with an event that changed conditions in the world and paralyzed Competition in major leagues.
The start was on February 19, when the Italian city of Milan hosted the Atalanta-Valencia match, in the presence of more than 45,000 fans who moved from Bergamo - the stronghold of Atalanta - to watch their team write history in the most expensive club competition.
They joined the 2,500 fans who came from Spain to support Valencia, and spent many hours celebrating on the streets of Milan before heading on the subway and other public transport to the stadium.
And more than a month after that confrontation, the Euro Sport website collected testimonies for specialists on the role of this match in the increasing incidence of infection with the emerging coronavirus (Covid-19).
Italy had witnessed the first case of corona recorded a day before that match, before the injuries doubled over the days, and today more than 70 thousand injuries and more than 6800 deaths.
The infectious disease specialist Massimo Ghali believes that the virus spread before the match in areas far from the city of Milan, but thousands of people gathered in one location was an important factor for its spread.
Francesco Lovoche, an immunologist in the Umberto clinic in Rome, believes that this match was a turning point in the spread of the virus in Italy, and he explained that the crowd of thousands of fans during the hours before, during and after the match was a fertile field for the spread and transmission of the virus at a stage when the region was not in a situation Ready and prepared to face it.
As for the Department of Lung Diseases at Papa Giovanni Hospital in Bergamo, Dr. Fabiano de Marco, he saw that the match was more like a biological bomb. He considered playing this match in the presence of the fans was crazy.
The Spanish newspaper, Marca, quoted the mayor of Bergamo, Giorgio Gori, as saying that the match was a "biological bomb" that contributed to the spread of the virus, but it was not the only reason for that, recalling that a large number of cases were recorded after a patient transferred the infection to the staff of the city's Alzano Lupardo Hospital.
Another scenario was presented by Italian media, and it talked about the possibility of bringing the Spanish fans to the virus to Italy, considering that the death in Valencia due to Corona was recorded on February 13, six days before the match.
On the other side, the Center for International Strategic Studies and the University of Valencia talked about the role of that match in increasing the spread of the virus in Spain.
The health authorities in Spain recorded HIV infections among Valencia fans and a number of journalists who accompanied the team to Italy, and the Spanish club announced that about a third of its members had been infected with Corona.
Spain counted 39,000 people living with the virus, more than 3,400 of whom died.