Following the sad death of Pope Francis, Italian football naturally had a pause in the fixture calendar to mark his passing and his funeral and that meant that the Saturday scheduled tie between Inter Milan and AS Roma was postponed by 24 hours and is now set to take place on Sunday afternoon.
Although it is known that pretty frantic talks had taken place on whether or not it would be feasible to continue to play the fixture on the Saturday in order for Inter to have an extra 24 hours of preparation for their upcoming Champions League semi final first leg tie against Spanish La Liga giants Barcelona, ultimately it just was not possible to do that and with the postponement confirmed, it means that history will be made as Inter host the first Sunday game in Italian football ahead of a European semi final.
Understandably from Inter’s point of view this is hardly ideal as they prepare for such an important and challenging task, but for pretty obvious reasons the circumstances mean they just have to roll up their sleeves and handle it as best as they can. From Roma’s point of view, they would have already been hoping that the Nerazzurri had one eye on the upcoming clash but they will now also be hoping that in knowing that they have lost 24 hours of recovery, that they may (even inadvertently and subconsciously) take their proverbial foot off the gas slightly in this tie in an attempt to preserve some energy.
It means that from a tactical, and approach point of view, it could be a fascinating watch for neutral fans in the wider world of Italian football, but whilst this will certainly be a unique situation, fans of all colours will probably be sleeping safe in the knowledge that it is very likely to be a true one off.
Serie A has a long standing tradition of ensuring that sides competing in European competition are always given ample preparation time, particularly when it comes to knockout rounds and steps are certain taken with the fixture list for quarter finals clashes and the latter stages of tournaments, and there is absolutely no reason to believe that this will change in the future even if a precedent has now effectively been set.
What will be interesting to see is if there is any potential fall out following the game from Inter’s side should they be defeated and then fail to impress in the following tie. You would hope not given the specific circumstances at play here, but there is no denying it could be a costly 24 hour loss.
