Coronavirus: The football game that kicked off Italy’s COVID-19 disaster

The decision to hold a Champions League match at a packed Milan stadium in February has resulted in a contagion disaster.

Main picture: Fans at the Atalanta-Valencia Champions League game at the San Siro stadium on February 19. Inset: Nurses prepare an intensive care unit in Italy

On the afternoon of February 19, Andrea Pontiggia was heading from Bergamo, Italy, to the biggest soccer match of his life — along with 40,000 of his closest friends.

The novel coronavirus, which had barely registered in Italy by that point, was the furthest thing from their minds.

The whole city seemed to be on the road.

In 48 years of rooting for Bergamo’s local professional soccer team, a modest outfit called Atalanta, neither Mr. Pontiggia nor his hometown had ever seen anything like it. Atalanta was somehow the Cinderella of European soccer, and now it had a date in the sport’s most prestigious tournament, the Champions League. The match had even been moved to Milan for the occasion.

The stadium, San Siro, had enough room in the stands for twice as many Bergamaschi as Atalanta’s home park, and the Italian fans intended to cram into every available seat. None of them had yet heard the words social distancing.

“Everything was crowded. The roads, all the surroundings, the stadium,” said Mr. Pontiggia, 55, who took nearly three hours to complete the 35-mile drive to the San Siro.

“It was practically a whole town moving to Milan. It was amazing, incredible.”

It was also a contagion disaster. Atalanta fans were walking into a petri dish. In a single mass gathering, they were about to prove how sporting events could end up at the centre of a global pandemic.

By then, the coronavirus was spreading through untold numbers of asymptomatic carriers.

Experts are now convinced that Atalanta’s 4-1 win over Valencia was a catalyst in turning Lombardy into one of the worst-hit regions on the planet.

WSJ