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Italian season start delayed |
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THE start of Italy’s soccer season will be
delayed two weeks as clubs try to resolve a dispute that could
keep dozens of top matches off television.The delay —
unprecedented in the soccer-crazed country — will put off the
start of the season until Sept. 14.“Everything that we decided
today was unanimous,” league and AC Milan president Adriano
Galliani said after a meeting of team representatives in Milan
Tuesday.Galliani said the first round of games would be made
up at a date to be determined.The Serie A and B seasons were
scheduled to start Aug. 31; no games were slated for Sept. 7-8
because Italy plays a European Championship qualifier at
Azerbaijan.Big clubs like Juventus and AC Milan have rich
deals with pay TV networks Stream and Tele+ for live
broadcasts of their matches. The eight second-tier clubs in
Serie A are without contracts, meaning their home matches
would not be televised.Pay TV networks, struggling with big
losses, have been offering smaller contracts to less popular
smaller clubs.The eight clubs in the 18-team league still
lacking TV deals are: Brescia, Atalanta, Perugia, Empoli,
Como, Piacenza, Modena, and last season’s surprise sensation,
Chievo.The delay brings further dismay to Italian soccer fans,
who have suffered a frustrating summer, seeing their team
disastrously ousted from the World Cup in the second round
against South Korea.Since then, many top teams have been
publicly struggling with their finances after years of
ballooning player salaries. Fans of the Florence club
Fiorentina suffered more than most, when their team was
banished from the league.City officials then hurriedly built a
new club that will start play this season from the country’s
fourth division under a new name, Florentia Viola.As the
latest sign of the growing financial crisis, Italian Football
League annulled the Lazio’s three transfer deals — Christian
Manfredini and Brazilian Eriberto from Chievo, and Massimo
Oddo from latest relegated Verona to Lazio, which means that
the three players have to return to the original clubs unless
Lazio can produce guarantees of their ability to pay for the
players.The season delay will tighten an already busy schedule
for the top players in the Italian league.National teams
across the continent have several qualifying matches coming up
for the European Championships, and several top Italian clubs
will play in the Champions League and the UEFA CUP this
season.The two-week delay is a relief for soccer lottery
administrators in China, who had been pondering to cancel
betting on Serie A. The new batch of tickets will be sold
Sept. 9 but buyers are to guess the results of matches played
the next weekend, with Sept. 15 as the deadline.Chinese
lottery players will bet on seven Italian, four German and two
French league matches each week.(SD-Agencies)
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