The annus horribilis of Italian football continued apace yesterday when, against the background of bitter rows about TV rights, Serie A and Serie B clubs voted to delay the start of the new season by two weeks.

Originally scheduled to start on September 1st, the new season will now start on September 15th.

This in effect means that only one round of matches will be postponed since no league programme had been scheduled for the weekend of September 8th, a weekend when Italy are due to play Azerbijan in a European Championship qualifier.

The 2002-2003 season will now start with the original September 15th fixture list, leaving the September 1st set of fixtures to be fitted into a midweek date later in the season.

Difficult and so far inconclusive negotiations between the Football League and Serie A clubs over both free-to-air terrestial TV rights and pay-per-view satellite TV rights explain the background to yesterday's not unexpected decision.

To a certain extent, both state broadcaster RAI and satellite channels, Stream and Tele Piu, have been selling the same blunt line to both the clubs and the Football League - the rich TV rights party is over.

State broadcaster RAI, which traditionally buys terrestial TV rights from the Football League in a collective deal, has dropped its offer for the new season from €88 million to €45 million.

The satellite channels, which negotiate with the individual clubs, have failed to agree contracts with eight of the smaller Serie A clubs such as Empoli, Como, Modena, Perugia etc.

It was this latter failure to agree terms which prompted the smaller clubs to call for a delay to the start of the season.

Whilst the most famous clubs in Italian soccer such as Juventus and AC Milan have signed Pay TV contracts worth €54 million and €49 million respectively, the smaller clubs have rejected annual deals worth €4.5 million, arguing they are entitled to more.

Furthermore, the smaller clubs have formed a consortium, Plus Media Trading (PMT), with which they intend to both collectively negotiate a better deal and form their own satellite Pay TV channel. The smaller clubs called for the delay to the seasonal start in order to better organise their new satellite channel.

This latest setback in Italian football comes after a season marked by the total flop of Italian clubs in European competitions, by Italy's dismal World Cup failure and by the collapse last month of one of the country's most famous clubs, Fiorentina.