By Anthony Barbagallo
A special football edition this week. Anthony Barbagallo interviews an Italian footballer from Sicily – gaining insight on the impacts the COVID-19 lockdown had on the lower divisions of Italian football earlier in the year.
Key points:
- All semi-professional football in Italy didn’t return to finish the 2019-20 season after the COVID-19 lockdown.
- Sicilian club Giarre Calcio miss out on the chance to gain a historical promotion.
- Giarre Calcio footballer describes the frustrating experience of being a semi-professional footballer – unable to play football and operate their clothing business during Italy’s COVID-19 lockdown earlier this year.
With football regarded as a second religion in Italy, the COVID-19 lockdown earlier in the year added more salt to the wounds of many Italian football fanatics and its players.
Italy’s horrific COVID-19 situation between March and May disrupted many of the elite players in the top division. Still, it was the players and clubs in Sicily’s lower divisions that felt the wrath of this football suspension. While Italy’s top three football divisions slowly returned to playing fixtures without fans, all the semi-professional leagues had been cancelled. This meant smaller clubs and semi-professional footballers would take a harder hit financially.
For Orazio Urso – a Sicilian player at Giarre Calcio – the football suspension impacted his team’s in-form run. Giarre Calcio, located in the province of Catania, is a side playing in Eccellenza (the fifth division of Italian football). If it weren’t for COVID-19 suspending all the semi-professional football levels in Italy, Urso and his Giarre teammates would have been playing in a historic playoff series for the fourth division (Serie D). A promotion for Giarre would have made a difference for its players – meaning they could fully dedicate their career to football and not have to rely on another job to supplement their income. Moving up to the fourth division would have also taken Giarre out of the regional Sicilian competition – placing them in a national league.
“The COVID-19 situation was a frustrating blow to our club’s ambition on reaching Serie D promotion. We had players of a high calibre and played some of the finest football in this season’s fifth division,” Orazio Urso stated.
After Orazio Urso had to stop playing the game he loved and the sport he earned some of his living from, he couldn’t even manage to operate his clothing store during the lockdown. Urso mentioned that he runs a clothing business together with his Giarre teammate, Marco Trovato, in Acireale – a town only 12km from the city of Catania.
“The clothing store, run by myself and Giarre teammate Marco Trovato, is called TRESEICINQUE. The COVID-19 lockdown was already hard enough for us semi-professional footballers, so not being able to fall back on our other work was frustrating.”
It is evident that the COVID-19 shutdown in Italy took a toll on several semi-professional footballers. Unable to play football and run a successful clothing store was a harsh experience that Giarre Calcio star Orazio Urso went through in early 2020.