Italian Milk Protestors Force Serie A Club To Miss Flight After Trapping Them In Training Ground

Serie A club Cagliari Calcio were about to leave their training ground on Saturday to catch the flight that would take them to their next match when they realized nearly 100 protestors had blocked all possibly exits. The protestors were made up of local farmers who were demonstrating against the recent drop in milk prices. While their typical course of action up until this point had involved spilling milk onto roads and disrupting traffic, the farmers decided that this confrontational demonstration might have more of an effect.

When police allowed the protestors to speak with members of the club, they demanded that the team abandoned the upcoming game against Milan in support of the movement. Director Mario Passetti said that was out of the question, according to Cagliari blog C:

[Translated from Italian]

To try to calm down the [protestors] was the general manager Mario Passetti, who said he was sympathetic to the protest but said that “not starting the team is not the right way to protest.” Then he added: “We can launch an official communication from the club in your support, but we can not play and lose at the table. You have to allow players to do their job.”

With that plan nixed, the farmers settled on the next best thing in their eyes: player demonstration. The players, coaches and team staff members would be allowed to leave the grounds if they kicked over jugs of milk as an act of solidarity with the protestors. Nicolo Barella and Alessandro Deiola were two of the players who participated in the kicking.

Give that the team probably lost a lot of time after missing their flight to the match, it’s probably good that those players got a couple warm-up kicks in.

[ Football Italia]