Italian Players To Protest This Weekend

Ital­ian Serie A & B play­ers will be com­ing to work a bit late this week­end.  This time their bosses will not mind, in fact they will sup­port it.  In a state­ment released by the Ital­ian Play­ers’ Asso­ci­a­tion (AIC — Asso­ci­azione Ital­iana Cal­ci­a­tori), play­ers from the Top 2 flights of Ital­ian foot­ball will come 15 min­utes late to the next round matches. 

This week­end, play­ers will arrive 15 min­utes late to their respec­tive matches in protest of pun­ish­ments levied by the Court of Arbi­tra­tion for Sport (CAS) on Daniele Man­nini and Davide Pos­sanzini.  The pair were each banned for a year on Thurs­day after they both arrived late for a drug test after a Serie B match in Decem­ber 2007 while play­ing for Brescia. 

Man­nini (on the left) now plays for Napoli & Pos­sanzini (on the right) remains at Bres­cia. 
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Man­nini & Pos­sanzini were orig­i­nally given 15 day bans by the Ital­ian Olympic Com­mit­tee (CONI — Comi­tato Olimpico Nazionale Ital­iano) for com­ing late to the drug test even though the Ital­ian Foot­ball Association, (FGIC — Fed­er­azione Ital­iana Giuoco Calcio), cleared the duo of any wrongdoing.  The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) stepped in and appealed to CAS for tougher sen­tences and got them. 

Some of the words being used to describe the pun­ish­ments were “scan­dalous,”  “exces­sive,” & “colos­sal injus­tice.”  Bres­cia Chair­man Gino Cori­oni once again stated that  play­ers were delayed because of his deci­sion to scold the team after suf­fer­ing a 3–0 home defeat to Chievo.

As a result of the scolding, the pair missed the half-hour dead­line for sub­mit­ting sam­ples.
Cori­oni stressed that a dop­ing offi­cial, whose job is to keep con­stant sight of cho­sen players, declined an invi­ta­tion into the locker room.  Napoli is espe­cially hit hard by this deci­sion as Man­nini has been an impor­tant part of their sea­son as they com­pete for a Euro­pean spot. 

No word on when an appeal or action against the CAS deci­sion will be made but undoubt­edly lawyers from the AIC, the clubs, and the play­ers will do something.  This drama is far from over so let’s hope that in the end jus­tice is served.

Tagged as: CAS, Daniele Mannini, Davide Possanzini, Italian Olympic Committee, Italian Players' Association, Napoli, Serie A