(Reuters) – The Serie A match between Lazio and Torino on Tuesday will not be postponed, say Italian media reports, despite the Torino squad being ordered to quarantine by their local health authority (ASL) following a COVID-19 outbreak.
The match is scheduled for 6.30pm (1730GMT) at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome, but Torino were told to quarantine by the Turin ASL after registering eight cases of the British variant of the virus.
Torino’s game against Sassuolo last Friday was suspended due to the outbreak, but sources at Lega Serie A, the league body, told Italian news agency ANSA that the match against Lazio will go ahead as planned.
The club is yet to travel south for the match and will be handed a 3-0 defeat and deducted a point if they fail to turn up for the scheduled kickoff.
That is the punishment that was handed to Napoli in October after they didn’t travel to Turin for a Serie A match against Juventus, saying the ASL had told them to stay at home following positive COVID-19 cases.
It resulted in bizarre scenes at the Allianz Stadium as the Juventus squad and match officials turned up and had to wait until 45 minutes after the scheduled kickoff time before the game could be officially abandoned.
Napoli later were successful with an appeal against the punishment to the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) Guarantee Board, the highest tribunal in Italian sport, and Serie A President Paolo Dal Pino conceded that the Torino case could be heading the same way.
“For us the game must go ahead, but if there is a hard and restrictive attitude from the ASL, we must also make evaluations based on the decision of the CONI Guarantee Board, who unfortunately set a legal precedent with the Juve-Napoli case,” Dal Pino told Gr Parlamento radio.
(Reporting by Alasdair Mackenzie; Editing by Christian Radnedge)
