Lazio’s outspoken president Claudio Lotito has delivered a bizarre and vulgar rant on the global coronavirus pandemic, with the 63-year-old eager to point out that "bacteria doesn’t mean infectious".
Nations across the world continue to put protocols in place that are intended to limit the spread of Covid-19.
Football has become caught up in that process, with regular rounds of testing held since competitive action returned on the back of several months of lockdown.
Lazio are among those to have seen senior players removed from their plans as they take in periods of self-isolation.
Controversy and debate has, however, been sparked in Roma as Ciro Immobile, Lucas Leiva and Thomas Strakosha have been ruled out of two Champions League games through negative tests, but figured in Serie A outings after being cleared as negative.
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Lotito has taken aim at the systems in place and the confusion being caused, with the Lazio chief telling La Repubblica : "I told you, it’s like a magic trick, what even is positive?
"Positive means contagious, right? There are bacteria in the vaginas of all women in the world, that doesn’t mean they are pathogens. Only in some cases do they become pathogens and degenerate."
Lotito also expressed his frustration at the testing process and can't understand why Immobile is not being allowed to face Juventus on Sunday. He added: "Our director Igli Tare is positive too, but nobody can tell us right now if someone is infectious or not.
"There is this difference in the interpretation of results. Our medical staff evaluated Immobile, his lung capacity checks were better than before. We have the swab, he is negative and so is his family, so why can’t he play against Juventus on Sunday?
"I have asked the FIGC to introduce a single structure that can perform all the tests and have the same parameters for everyone. I suggested the Federlab, which already does them for Serie C. We need a third party that can end this chaos.
"We went to Avellino for our tests because the structures in Rome were already crowded and I didn’t want players to seemingly get preferential treatment, keeping others in line."