Soccer is returning across Europe, and Italy’s Serie A became the latest to announce its resumption this week, when Italian Sports Minister Vincenzo Spadafora gave the soccer league the go-ahead for a planned June 20 return to the pitch.
“Italy is starting up again and it is only right that football does, too,” Spadafora said on Thursday.
The league plans to finish out the Coppa Italia, an annual cup competition, from June 13-20 and then bring the Serie A back in full starting on June 20. The Coppa has three matches left — two semifinal matches featuring Juventus, AC Milan, SSC Napoli and Inter Milan, and then a final.
As Gabriele Marcotti noted at ESPN, the Italian league has a ton of its season left to play, as Italy was among the first countries to see a mass outbreak at the outset of the pandemic that put sports on hold worldwide. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see teams consistently playing twice a week to condense the schedule, and also more experimental fixtures like single-elimination postseason matches.
Serie A follows Bundesliga, which arrived in Germany this month as the country stamped out its epidemic more effectively, and the Premier League, which announced its June return a few hours before Spadafora gave Serie A the green light.
Sports are arriving in a wave that follows in the wake of countries flattening their epidemic curves, with no crowds and a mass of fans eager to watch their favorite teams again on television.