‘You cannot die for a football match’: Italian health officials tell English fans to avoid Rome

‘Our message [to fans] is simple: don’t come’

England soccer fan Dawn Hughes, who lives and works in Italy, poses for a photograph before the Euro 2020 quarter final against Ukraine, outside Stadio Olimpico in Rome (REUTERS)

Italian health chiefs have warned English football fans not to put lives at risk in order to travel to Rome for Saturday’s Euros quarter-final against Ukraine.

The Lazio region’s health boss, Alessio D’Amato, said it would be impossible for any fan travelling from England to attend the match and they should stay away.

Evoking a now-notorious Champions League match in Italy last year between Atalanta and Valencia, which became a public health disaster at the beginning of the pandemic and sparked a deadly wave of Covid in northern Italy, Mr D’Amato warned he wanted no repeats.

He recalled the “viral bomb” from the 2020 Champions League match and added: “I don’t want us to find ourselves in the same situation, with the arrival of English fans in Rome for England-Ukraine. You cannot die for a football game.”

He told Rome newspaper Il Messaggero: “Our message [to fans in England] is simple. Don’t come. It is pointless to come to Rome because we have a rule of five days’ quarantine... For those who are not already here it is impossible to see the match at the stadium and they will be sent home.”

Claudio Mastroianni, head of the Infectious Diseases Department at Rome’s Policlinico hospital, warned of a repeat of the 2,000 cases in Scotland after fans travelled to the England-Scotland group match, and said “maximum security” was needed.

The England fans “should not follow their team to Italy”, he added. “We saw what happened in Scotland. In Italy the situation is improving. Having England fans crowded on the terraces means running the risk of new outbreaks at a moment when hospitals are leaving a critical phase.”

Half of Italy’s 60,000 deaths in the first wave of the pandemic were in the northern region, with army trucks carrying coffins leaving Bergamo, where the Atalanta club is based, as morgues were inundated, becoming the grim symbol of Italy’s pandemic.

Fearful of an increase in infections just as new cases drop to the lowest level of the year and businesses reopen, Italy’s government is working hard to discourage England fans tempted to try their luck.

Italy’s Interior Ministry is carrying out extra checks at airports, motorway border crossings and trains to catch England fans, while the regions will carry out extra quarantine verifications.

Undersecretary for the Interior Ministry, Ivan Scalfarotto, told Italian radio: “The government has decided on the maximum level of checks for the match on Saturday. For those traveling there will be checks from the arrival to the turnstiles of the stadium. There will be no exceptions.”

Rome’s Stadio Olimpico is off-limits to any England fans thinking of travelling from the UK (Pool via REUTERS)

And the Italian interior ministry said security officials had proposed “a special ticketing policy” which “provides for the block of all sales and transfers of tickets from 9pm today, and the cancellation of tickets sold to residents of the UK from midnight of 28 June”.

Those who violate quarantine risk a fine of up to 4,000 euros and, if testing positive for the virus, criminal charges.

Rome’s prefecture, which is in charge of security, is planning extra checks at the stadium, where Brits may be asked to show their boarding pass or residence documents. Police will be stopping fans in hotels, in piazzas with big screens and in outdoor bars in areas popular with Britons.

The Italian Embassy in London said that anyone who has been in the UK and has not observed five days of quarantine in Italy “will not be admitted to the stadium, even if they have a ticket”.