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The ball of Italian Serie A is pictured before the Italian Serie A football match between Juventus and Atalanta at the Allianz Stadium in Turin on March 10, 2024. (Photo by MARCO BERTORELLO / AFP) (Photo by MARCO BERTORELLO/AFP via Getty Images)
The President of the Italian Tennis Association lashed out at the Lega Serie A for the chaos in scheduling Week 37 games. ‘We’re not moving our final because some idiot typed up the fixture list with his feet.’
The situation is truly now farcical, because five games are meant to be on Sunday at 11.30 UK time (12.30 CEST), but the local authorities ordered they be moved to Monday at 19.45 UK (20.45 CEST).
Serie A Week 37 is a farce
We still don’t know when these matches are going to be played, as the Lega Serie A’s emergency appeal to the TAR tribunal was kicked back to the local authorities, who organised a summit this evening to figure out a common solution.
If they cannot agree, then the TAR will make its ruling on Friday, less than 48 hours before the five matches are meant to start.
Those games are Roma-Lazio, Como-Parma, Genoa-Milan, Juventus-Fiorentina and Pisa-Napoli.
Serie A had suggested moving back the start of the Italian Open men’s singles final to give room for the Rome Derby, but this was rejected outright and in colourful terms.
“The supervisor of the ATP tour is here and this tournament is organised differently to a football competition,” said Federtennis President Angelo Binaghi.
“They can change whenever they like, we cannot, because we have other obligations. And we cannot be expected to move our final just because some idiot typed up the fixture list with his feet.”
This was in some ways entirely predictable, because organising the Rome Derby for the same weekend as the Italian Open was always going to cause problems.
The issue was made even worse by the need to play so many other matches at the same time to ensure fairness.
It could’ve been brought forward to Saturday, but that was impossible because Lazio were in the Coppa Italia Final against Inter on Wednesday evening.
