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MILAN: Footballers should respect the money they make and their employers, Serie A Chief Executive Luigi De Siervo said on Wednesday in response to AC Milan midfielder Adrien Rabiot’s concerns over his club’s planned league match in Australia.
Italy’s Serie A have turned the unavailability of the San Siro in February due to the Winter Olympics into an opportunity for Italian football to increase international visibility, and Milan’s fixture with Como will be played in Perth.
Rabiot, currently on international duty with France, called the decision crazy when he spoke to French newspaper Le Figaro on Tuesday.
“I was surprised when I learned that AC Milan will be playing a Serie A match against Como ... in Australia,” Rabiot said.
“It’s completely crazy. But these are financial agreements to give visibility to the league, things that are beyond us.
“There’s a lot of talk about schedules and player health, but this all seems truly absurd. It’s crazy to travel so many miles for a match between two Italian teams in Australia. We have to adapt, as always.”
De Siervo, attending a Serie A assembly meeting in Rome, was asked about Rabiot’s remarks that these decisions are taken without the input of players.
“He’s right, but Rabiot forgets, like all footballers who earn millions of euros, that they are paid to carry out an activity, to play football,” De Siervo told reporters.
“He should have respect for the money he earns, complying with the wishes of his employer, Milan, who accepted and pushed for this match to be played abroad.”
UEFA, while opposed to domestic league matches being played abroad, reluctantly approved the fixture on Monday (along with a LaLiga game in Miami), saying that FIFA’s regulatory framework, still under review, lacks sufficient clarity and detail.
De Siervo, however, believes football needs to follow the example of other sports if the game is to continue to grow.
“Last year’s Tour de France started from Florence, the Giro d’Italia often begins abroad. This is done to strengthen the product, not weaken it,” he said of the cycling events.
“The NFL and NBA have been playing away from the US for years, with the concept of being a global product.
“UEFA said it was against it, but accepted the exceptional nature of this event. We believe, however, that this can be a model that the world of football, with precise rules, must follow if it is not to lose out to other sports.”

CAPE TOWN: African fans will need their calculators over the next week of World Cup qualifiers to figure out if their favored team remains in contention for a place at next year’s finals in North America.
The nine group winners all qualify automatically and will be determined when the group qualifying program ends on Tuesday.
While that is simple enough, there is the possibility of an additional 10th African team reaching next June’s finals in Canada, Mexico and the United States via a lengthy playoff route.
The four best runners-up from the nine groups will go into a playoff next month to determine a sole African representative for a further intercontinental playoff planned for March.
Calculating the four best runners-up from the nine African groups would have been easy had Eritrea not withdrawn before the start of the campaign, but after the draw was made, and left one of the groups with five teams instead of six.
Therefore, because the five countries in Group E played eight qualifiers instead of 10 in all the other groups, the four best runners-up will be determined not by their overall points tally but by their results only against the third, fourth and fifth-placed sides in their respective groups.
In other words, any points that the runners-up accumulated in matches against the last-placed finisher are expunged, the Confederation of African Football has confirmed.
The penultimate round of qualifiers began on Wednesday and with two rounds to play, there are only two confirmed group winners, no confirmed runners-up and four teams condemned to last place.
Morocco and Tunisia last month secured top place in their respective groups, and a ticket to the 2026 World Cup, while Djibouti (Group A), Seychelles (F), Somalia (G) and Sao Tome and Principe (H) will finish last.
Effectively, the identity of the best four runners-up will only be determined when the last group matches are concluded on Tuesday, and even then the calculators will be needed to see who heads to the playoffs.
Some of the continent’s heavyweights, and former World Cup finalists, like Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria, look likely to miss out on automatic qualification, so will be particularly anxious to see if they can keep their World Cup hopes alive via the playoffs.