Kickoff of Serie A in doubt because of labor dispute

The start of the latest Serie A football season was in doubt Thursday after the top Italian league refused to sign an agreement over players' collective bargaining rights and a last-ditch set of emergency meetings failed to budge either side' s position. Maurizio Beretta, the president of the official federation of Serie A clubs, met with club leadership late Wednesday but failed to make any headway. In the last vote, 18 Serie A clubs voted against agreeing to the collective bargaining terms with the players' union, with only two in favor. The season was scheduled to get underway Saturday, with a cross-Tuscany battle pitting Florence-based Fiorentia at Siena and defending champions Milan scheduled to travel to Sardinia to play at Cagliari. The two host teams - Siena and Cagliari - were the only two teams to vote in favor of giving into the players' union requests. If the strike goes ahead as planned, Italy will be the second major European country to have the start of its football season delayed: players in Spain' s top two leagues went on strike before the start of their season a week ago, and as of Thursday it appeared likely they will not start play before this weekend' s slate of games. Even though the threat of a football players' strike is a regular occurrence in Italy, the last time players actually refused to play was 15 years ago. That strike was eventually resolved by giving players more freedom to change clubs when their contracts expired, and it abolished the strictest rules limiting the number of foreign players on Serie A rosters. Italy' s latest set of problems has been simmering for more than a year. The collective bargaining issue was raised after the last deal expired at the end of the 2009-2010 season, and a strike was narrowly averted only after a stopgap agreement was reached on the promise that a deal would be hammered out before the start of this season. So far, that has not happened. The two sides stayed apart for most of the off-season and began talks again only in the last two weeks. The main sticking points will not be easy to solve: the deal requires that players involved in contract disputes should be forced to train separately from the rest of the team, a rule players' representatives strongly oppose. There is also a provision that such players can be traded without their consent, and that all players should be forced to pay a kind of "solidarity tax." As of Thursday, the strike seemed imminent. "For the moment, the conditions for us to play do not exist," Damiano Tommasi, the president of the players' union, told reporters. "I am horrified that we cannot play this weekend, but we are firm that we cannot start the new season without a collective bargaining agreement." One former player negotiation representative, who spoke to Xinhua on the condition of anonymity, said that financial implications might eventually force clubs to give into the players demands. "Siena and Cagliari voted in favor of integrating the players demands because they had the most to lose with home games scheduled this weekend," the former representative said. "Next week, half the teams in Serie A will have scheduled home games. It will be interesting to see what happens when those games are at risk."