What has so far been the most important day of this anomalous summer of 2023 has arrived for Reggina. The hearing before the Lazio Regional Administrative Court on the appeal of the Strait club against exclusion from the Serie B championship is set for 3pm. It won’t be the definitive step, considering that the Council of State will follow, but it can say a lot.
For the first time, the Reggina case has come to the attention of ordinary justice, after the negative outcomes of the appeals presented in the sports arena. The road remains uphill, but there is hope of being able to make it.
The alternative is the abyss, possibly destined to represent another social thud of a city which does not lack problems and which has in its amaranth shirt a banner in which hundreds of thousands of people can be recognized, even scattered throughout Italy and the world.
Everyone will live this day with bated breath, aware that a fundamental turn is being played in the championship of football survival. Reggina will go on the “field” with a team of high-level lawyers made up of Fabio Cintioli, Enrico Lubrano, Donato Patera and Paolo Rodella. The issue is well known: the exclusion arises from not having paid just under 800,000 euros by 20 June and from an approval of the debt restructuring plan obtained last 12 June, but deemed not definitive.
In particular, the club is contested for not having complied with the peremptoriness of the deadline set by the football rules for registering for the championships, although the Court’s ruling on the same restructuring plan indicated a later deadline for being able to pay.
Reggina, among other things, had paid more than 5 million euros by the date indicated (June 20) to settle the pending payments for the 2022-2023 season. The same disputed amount had, however, been paid in early July after the Covisoc notation, arrived with the rejection of 30 June. A payment made after the deadline, but with the will to show goodwill and availability. The other point of Amaranth’s position is that the counterpart sentence, on the basis of ordinary laws, should be considered immediately enforceable.
Furthermore, Reggina should also emphasize the impossibility of retroactively asserting the famous FIGC communiqué 169/A. The one that in the month of April contained the resolutions of the Federal Council regarding the registration of clubs and the use of the Company Crisis and Insolvency Code. Reggina had already started its path in December 2022.
For some time it has been hypothesized that the reasons for the amaranth club could find greater sensitivity in the field of ordinary justice. It will be the judgment about whether it was a correct hypothesis.
The ruling could come as early as the evening. It won’t be the final act, but the decision of the Prima Ter Section of the Lazio Tar will be a watershed in the summer of Reggina, pending the Council of State. We have just entered the month of August in which there will be no middle ground: either the admission or the oblivion of the club and football in Reggio Calabria.
