In the latest episode of Things Can Only Happen In Italy, Juventus and nine other clubs went into the early hours of Thursday evening still not knowing when their Matchday 37 fixture would be played. Could it be Sunday afternoon? Could it be the original lunchtime kickoff time? Could it be something different? Nobody knew!
The time ticked away. We waited, probably updated social media more than we should to actually know when news would drop.
Once it finally did, you had the feeling that there was
still something left to happen because it’s Italy and nothing is done without somebody getting mad about it.
But now we know that Juventus’ final home game of the season against mathematically safe Fiorentina will kickoff a half-hour earlier on Sunday afternoon than we thought it would at the beginning of the week. After nearly three full days of uncertainty after the original Matchday 37 schedule was announced as a result of the Rome derby kickoff time being moved to accommodate the men’s final of the Italian Open tennis tournament — one in which Italian star Jannik Sinner will likely be taking part in — that is being held right next door to the Stadio Olimpico and then more than two days that followed being absolute chaos when it comes to not knowing when things will actually be taking place since half the schedule had been moved to play at the same time with Champions League qualification being attached to it.
The time, you ask? It’s at high noon (12:00 CEST) rather than the usual 12:30 p.m. Sunday lunchtime kickoff.
That means an earlier-than-usual Sunday lunchtime kickoff window involves the following fixutes:
- Juventus-Fiorentina
- Roma-Lazio
- Como-Parma
- Genoa-Milan
- Pisa-Napoli
As we said on Wednesday even though the kickoff time was still an unknown and multiple steps in the process were still to follow, it was a completely fair decision to move half the Matchday 37 fixture list to one specific time slot to not give a certain club that has a chance to qualify for the Champions League any sort of competitive advantage. But then the Prefect in Rome had to get involved and this whole thing just absolutely kicked off into what it turned into three days later.
Luciano Spalletti and the nine other managers involved in these affected fixtures held their respective training sessions on Thursday not knowing when their next game would actually be taking place. That had to be a little unsettling to say the least — and especially for the five clubs of teams that can still finish in the top four.
There are only three points that separate Antonio Conte’s Napoli in second place and Como down in sixth. All teams have already qualified for a European competition, so now it’s just a matter of settling which of the Champions League, Europa League or Conference League that all five of these clubs will be slotted in to.
Then again, all of this did give us one of the best quotes from a sporting official we’ve gotten in a while courtesy of Angelo Binaghi, the president of the Italian Tennis Association:
English translation: “We’re not moving the tennis final because an idiot organized the soccer calendar with his feet.”
You would struggle to find an absolute bar that is better than that and done in such a succinct way. Maybe there were folks behind him losing their mind like it was a rap battle or something after he said it, I don’t know. I might have been if I was there next to him
