CAMPI BISENZIO (Florence) “I am destroyed”, are the only words uttered by president of Asd Lanciotto, Giancarlo Cerbai. The football club of Capalle, in the Municipality of Campi, as a sign of mourning for yesterday, decided to close the La Villa sports field in Capalle. And he lets it be known that, when the Castelfiorentino United footballer, Mattia Giani, fell ill and collapsed to the ground, «a doctor and two nurses intervened immediately who gave the player cardiac massage and also applied the defibrillator before the 118 ambulance arrived.”
What happened around the quarter of an hour of the match between Lanciotto and Castelfiorentino United is a mystery, if – according to what the player’s family reports – the defibrillator used was instead that of the ambulance.
So several minutes after the illness.
What are the rules
A mystery about which Lanciotto himself makes it known “the investigations will clarify what happened.” But at least according to the football club the rules of the Football Federation would have been observed: «To the host clubs of the regional Championships of Excellence it is mandatory to have a doctor designated by them present at each raceequipped with a document certifying the personal identity and professional activity carried out and available to the host team and the hosted team. Alternativelythe host clubs of the regional Excellence championships are required to have an ambulance at the edge of the playing field“, states the federal regulation, which however presents a limit in the system of sanctions: “Failure to comply with one of these obligations must be reported in the tender report for the purposes of imposition of the sanction».
In other words, as FIGC sources confirm, if the doctor and the ambulance are not there – and the referee must necessarily note this in the report – the game is not cancelledbut everything passes into the hands of the sports judge, who normally imposes a fine of a few hundred euros on anyone who has not respected the provisions.
At the moment the report is classified, until the sports judge’s statement, which should be released tomorrow, April 17th.
The arrival of the ambulance
According to Lanciotto’s version, which speaks of the presence of two nurses in addition to the doctor, compliance with the rules would have been redundant, thus denying the rumors that the cardiac massage would have been provided by a masseur. Furthermore, for many of those who were at the Lanciotto sports field, including Mattia Giani’s family members, the 118 ambulance would have arrived after at least 10 minutes, a very long time for those who were worried about the boy (and only later did it arrive the medical vehicle, with the doctor on board). However, from the ASL Toscana Centro they let it be known that the ambulance came to Mattia’s rescue 8 minutes after the 112 call and furthermore that the ministerial guidelines provide that the intervention should possibly take place within 20 minutes in a non-urban area. «In those dramatic moments, the perception of time is not there», they say from the company.
The defibrillator
As for the defibrillator – it is not known what type the one supplied with the Lanciotto was – the obligation for all sports centres, even amateur ones, to have it and to have trained people available to use it has been in force since 2017. But from 2021, law 116 obliges sports clubs to own an automatic or semi-automatic defibrillator (AED) which, in the absence of healthcare personnel or in any case non-medical but trained personnel, in cases of suspected cardiac arrest will allows use even by those who do not meet the requirements.
