Starting from the 2024/2025 season, there will no longer be ball boys on the sidelines in the Serie A football championship. This was decided by Lega Serie A – the association that brings together the clubs of the top national tournament – to prevent the risk of strategic time wasting in favor of the home team.
From now on, the players will be the ones to retrieve the ball from cone-shaped containers – the so-called “chinesini” – scattered around the pitch, as already happens in the most popular championship in the world: the English Premier League.
There will be six on the bench side, and five on the other at a minimum distance of 1.5 meters from the sidelines. On the short sides of the pitch, the reserve balls cannot be placed in correspondence with the penalty area so as not to impact with the VAR detection systems.
“Generally speaking and where space allows, the ideal distance to place the balls from the sidelines is 2.5 metres,” reads the League’s circular number 5 entitled General rules relating to official first team competitions.
In reality, the ball boys will not be eliminated completely. In fact, they will be the ones to retrieve the balls and place them on the supports, just as they will be the ones to hand the ball to the goalkeepers for throw-ins.
The use of “chinesini” is not an absolute novelty for Italian football. This method had already been used during the last Coppa Italia final between Juventus and Atalanta, played at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome.
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