Lazio have not received a 3-0 forfeit win and will play Torino later this season, the Italian football federation has announced today.
According to a statement on the FIGC website earlier today, the Biancocelesti’s appeal for a 3-0 forfeit win over Torino after they failed to show up to the Stadio Olimpico at the start of this month has been rejected.
MORE: The Verdict on Lazio’s Appeal for a 3-0 Win Over Torino Has Been Delayed
The Granata suffered a serious outbreak of Covid-19 in the squad, forcing them to miss their prior match against Sassuolo, and they also failed to show up to the Stadio Olimpico for the match against the Biancocelesti on the 2nd March.
Initially it was ruled that the match would be postponed, but Lazio appealed. This has now been rejected and the match will be played later this season, with the date yet to be announced.
MORE: Lazio Will Present a 19-Page Appeal in an Attempt to Keep 3-0 Result Against Torino
Below is the FIGC’s full statement:
The Sporting Judge has stopped in front of the clear disposition of the last note of the Local Health Authority of Turin, “which on March 1st, promptly with respect to the match scheduled for March 2nd, integrating and clarifying, even if on request, the scope of its previous act of February 23rd specified that the measure in default lasted until the end of March 2nd 2021”, considering, therefore, that this act integrates the so-called factum principis, which means that the match will be played on the field.
Factum principis, which prevented the Company F.C. Torino S.p.A. from performing its services in relation to the football match Lazio-Torino; an act which, we repeat, was not and is not open to review by the sports justice bodies.
Finally, as regards the second ground of appeal in which the complainant Company criticizes the conduct of the Company F.C. Torino S.p.A. in the case in question, which was not in keeping with the principles of sporting loyalty and fair play and which, for this alone, would justify the application of the sanction under Art. 53 of the NOIF, i.e. a 0-3 defeat, this Court cannot fail to point out that the interpretative measure adopted by the Local Health Authority of Turin on 1 March 2021 raises more than one concern.
Indeed, an administrative act, moreover with the aim of preventing collective health in the face of the most serious health emergency in the modern history of humanity, cannot produce effects from the day after its adoption, in the same way as a judicial act.
Having said this, there is no doubt that the Company F.C. Torino S.p.A. benefited from the measure adopted by the Turin health authority, moreover, at the request of the Granata Company itself. In this connection, reference can only be made, once again, to the principle according to which “the ultimate aim of the sporting system is to enhance sporting merit, loyalty, probity and healthy competition.
This principle should never be thwarted, even in the present health emergency situation, by behaviour which, as in the case of the Company F.C. Torino S.p.A., seems to be aimed, instead, at obtaining, in the hypothesis of players testing positive to the COVID-19, the postponement of the playing of matches that could be, without any problem, played, given, moreover, the considerable number of players’ rosters available to the professional clubs.
Behaviour, the latter, marked by a kind of “cunning” that are not, in any way, in line with the principles of fairness, probity and correctness that must, instead, always inspire those who participate in competitions that, although professional in nature, always concern a game, or rather a “game” to remember the word included in the definition of the Federation.
