Lecce have produced a damning statement, criticising Serie A for the short rearrangement of their league game with Atalanta.
The club were in mourning after their physio of 26 years, Graziano Fiorita died at the team hotel.
The match was initially scheduled for Friday, but the league moved it to Sunday, a date not deemed good enough by the relegation strugglers.
Lecce wore all-white kits for the 1-1 draw that read: “No value, no colour.”
They also said on social media: “We will wear our jersey again when Graziano returns home and is honoured, as he deserves to be, by his people.”
The club also issued a statement suggesting they would have been given more mourning time if they were a bigger name.
“US Lecce believes that the League’s decision to recover the match with Atalanta a few hours after the death of our Graziano Fiorita is terribly disrespectful of the serious mourning that has struck the boy’s family, the Club and the Lecce fans,” they said.
“In other cases, equally painful, more reasonable decisions have been made. A hierarchy of death emerges based on the coat of arms of the affected club, or worse still, in consideration of the role played by the person who passes away.
“The ‘team group’, for those who know football, represents a bubble away from the spotlight where the less flashy figures can be driving virtuous examples.
“This was the case for our Graziano who served in Lecce for 26 years and who, as far as we are concerned, will continue to do so, at least as long as this ownership is in place.
“Graziano Fiorita died while he was on retreat with the team, far from his wife and 4 children and still lies thousands of kilometers away from home, waiting for the magistrate to authorize his return.
“This match should not have been played today, but all attempts to postpone it have been cynically rejected.
“We thank the Minister of Sport Andrea Abodi who until the last, but without success, tried to have the match played on a more suitable date.
“The team will regularly show up on the field despite having left Salento only today, hoping, until the last, for a change of heart that never came.
“Graziano’s memory is not honoured by not showing up on the field or by having the Primavera play.
“You don’t respond to a grave injustice by blatantly violating the rules, as if honouring Graziano meant starting a competition between us and the League to see who can do worse.
“We will play the game of ‘trampled values’, but we will do it wearing an anonymous white jersey, which does not represent us, without colours, crests and logos.
“We will wear our jersey again when Graziano returns home and is honoured, as he deserves, by his people.”
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