Safeguard not only the teams playing in Europe this year, but also those who should – and would like to – play there next year. It is in this spirit that, once again, Roma wrote to the Football League: today the advances and postponements of the seventeenth return day, scheduled for 11 and 12 May, should be communicated. A game, that between Atalanta and Rome (played in Bergamo) which will see two teams involved who, only a few days earlier, will have had the second leg of the Europa League semi-final. Lin Rome he asked the League that the match be played on Monday (as has already been agreed for Atalanta-Salernitana) and not on Sunday (when Roma-Juventus will instead be played). This is unlikely to be granted because The Italian Cup final is scheduled for Wednesday 15 May between Atalanta itself and Juventus.
Rome, still waiting for the recovery of Atalanta-Fiorentina
Roma, then, proposed to the League to postpone the final, also because the Bergamo players will face a team not involved in the cups: moving the match by 24 hours would not entail great risks. Even if, as always in these cases, the League is against it because the match is being played in Rome and the fans arriving from Bergamo and Turin have already organized themselves in advance. All true and understandable, but the fact is that, again, Roma finds itself penalized by a crazy calendar and difficult to understand considering, and the Friedkin company underlines this in the letter sent to the League in which it requests protection, that there is still no date for the recovery of Atalanta-Fiorentina. Given that Gasperini’s team is playing the Champions League point by point with De Rossi’s team, this is no small detail. These are the words with which Roma, in their fourth European semi-final in a row, asks the League to protect them as a club and as a representative of Italian football in Europe: “This request – we read in the letter – derives not only from the centrality of this match (Atalanta-Roma, ed.) for the purposes of qualifying for the next edition of the Champions League, but also from the need to protect and guarantee the integrity of the Serie A Championship, which we are sure represents our common objective, in order to build a product of value that is credible for everyone the interested parties, from the institutions to the fans”.
