Lecce, Normann goodbye Serie A: the background of an international case

“I’m ready for this new adventure. Come on Lecce!”. He had even said it in Italian, with the yellow and red scarf around his neck and a smile on his face. In the end, however, Mathias Normann will not play in Serie A alongside Hjulmand and his teammates. Just over 24 hours after the announcement of his arrival on loan from Rostov, the club of Saverio Sticchi Damiani announced that it had definitively interrupted the process that would have led to the registration of the player, in agreement with the latter. But why?

what happened

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The case is particular and, as far as Italian clubs are concerned, unprecedented. To allow Normann to start his Serie A adventure, Lecce should have handed over to the FIGC the necessary documents to authorize the Norwegian to play in Italy. This practice usually does not involve insurmountable obstacles. To be clear: if an Italian club sells its player on loan abroad and, once back, decides to keep him in the team, then he will have to request the return of these documents to the federation of the country in which the player took the field. last time. And he will have to deliver them to the FIGC.

from England to Russia

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As for Normann, however, the situation is more complex. Last season, the Norwegian midfielder played for the Premier League club Norwich. This means that, at the moment, the documents that make it possible to use him are still in the offices of the English federation. Rostov, in fact, did not take steps to ensure that these documents return to the headquarters of the Russian federation, well aware of the fact that – thanks to the extraordinary regulations, introduced by FIFA after the start of the war – the player would have been free to find a new team. .

no happy ending

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And so it was: Normann had chosen Lecce and vice versa. But the bureaucratic times turned out to be longer than expected: the Giallorossi would have had to push for the necessary documents to be transferred first of all from England to Russia. And, then, from Russia to Italy. A process that, these days, is more complicated than expected.

and the fifa?

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The extreme ratio, in similar circumstances, provides for the intervention of FIFA, which would take care of speeding up the passage of documents from one federation to another. We said, however, that Normann’s is an unprecedented case. The deadline for the conclusion of this process is therefore not predictable and Lecce would have risked engaging Normann without being able to field him for weeks or even months. For this reason, the Giallorossi preferred to interrupt the negotiations, returning to the market in search of new opportunities.