Champions: Barcelona-Naples on Wednesday, March 18 will be played behind closed doors | Champions League 2019

The Barcelona-Naples match, of the Champions League that will be played on March 18 at the Camp Nou, will be played behind closed doors as a result of the spread of the coronavirus, as it took place after a meeting held Tuesday between representatives of the Generalitat and FC Barcelona.

“The recommendation is that the game be played behind closed doors by sanitary criteria and Barcelona has assumed it,” said the General Secretary of Sports of the Generalitat, Gerard Figueras.

The measure was confirmed by Figueras and the Secretary of Public Health of Catalua, Joan Guix, at the end of the extraordinary meeting, in which representatives of FC Barcelona, ​​the General Secretariat of Sport and the departments of Health and Interior of the Generalitat participated.

In this way, the second round of the Champions League between Barcelona and Naples (1-1 in the first leg), scheduled for next Wednesday, March 18, will be played without public in the barn, a fact that has not happened in the Barcelona stadium since October 1, 2017, when the club decided not to open the doors that Sunday for the Bara-Las Palmas party in which a referendum was being held for the self-determination of Catalua, prohibited by the Justice.

In this case, the health precaution suggested by the Generalitat, given the possibility that some 5,000 Italians travel with their equipment, has led the Barca club to follow the criteria of the Catalan government, and more when Italy is one of the most powerful outbreaks in the spread of the coronavirus, and that has caused the death of 463 deaths associated with this infection directly or indirectly.

“The club has made the decision as its own and will apply the government's recommendations. We appreciate the safety of the citizen,” Figueras explained to journalists' questions.

For his part, the Secretary of Health said that the decision to hold the game behind closed doors has been taken by “strictly sanitary” criteria and that no alternative has ever been raised, denying rumors about the possibility of playing the game without the presence of the 5,000 Italian fans to whom Barcelona had sold tickets.

Thus, Barcelona joins other major international clubs and federations that have taken extraordinary measures to prevent further contagion of COVID-19, such as Valencia and Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), which also hold their League matches behind closed doors. of Champions against Atalanta and Borussia of Dortmund German, respectively, and the Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI), which announced on Monday the suspension of all sporting events in Italy until April 3.

Although Naples is not one of the four confined regions of Italy, the Generalitat has decided to take this measure because currently Italy is the second country in the world with more cases -9,172- and deceased -463- by COVID-19.

In Spain, on the other hand, the number of infected people rose this week to 1,231, with a total of 30 deaths since the beginning of the outbreak, a situation that has already forced the Barcelona Marathon to be postponed, from March 15 to 25 October, and the presentation of the next edition of the Barcelona Open Banco de Sabadell tournament, which had to take place this Tuesday at the Sal de Cent of the Barcelona City Council.

“We will be attentive to the measures that appear every day because the situation is changing,” concluded the secretary of the sport.

This incidence in the Camp Nou is the second of the season, after the recommendation of LaLiga the classic between Barcelona and Real Madrid was postponed. The Competition Committee of the Spanish Federation of Soccer as officialized and the match to be played on October 26, passed on Wednesday December 18 (0-0).

The motivation for the postponement was that the sports entities feared that the game could not be played with order due to political tensions in Catalonia and that a call for demonstration in Barcelona could affect not only security but the normal course of the game.