Italian Footballers' Association (AIC) president Damiano Tommasi has slammed the Lega Serie A for punishing Sassuolo.
Sassuolo's 2-1 win over Pescara from last weekend was overturned with the game awarded to their opponents 3-0 since the Lega Serie A claims the club did not register one of their players in a 25-man squad ahead of the new season.
The 25-player squad cap was only introduced a year ago in a bid to encourage clubs to give more room to homegrown talent under the age of 21, since these do not count towards that total.
Sassuolo have one of the largest contingents of Italian players with nine out of their 11 starters against Pescara all from Italy. That contrasts with the opening fixture of the Serie A season between Roma and Udinese, which saw only one Italian take to the field.
Antonino Ragusa, the 26-year-old Italian midfielder signed from Cesena last week and whose involvement on Sunday has cost the Emilia-Romagna club victory is the kind of player the rule is meant to defend, yet his 25-minute appearance has instead caused controversy. Sassuolo have appealed the decision, claiming that it is a Lega Serie A system error which is at fault.
"We opposed this rule on the 25 players and we continue to oppose it as it is because other than not being of any use, it is punishing young Italian players. Now we see the statistics," Tommasi told ANSA.
"It's a paradox that Sassuolo, a club full of Italians, are now punished by a rule which was sold as one which would incentivise the use of Italian footballers. When you have rules like these which don't correspond with any technical project, you obtain the exact opposite of what you want."
Sassuolo claim they have evidence which proves they submitted the paperwork for Ragusa to be included in their 25-man squad and that the Lega Serie A's computer system must have been at fault for the fact these documents never arrived.
While their appeal is heard, they have dropped back down to three points in the current Serie A standings -- a point behind Pescara rather than five ahead of them.
Sassuolo's is not the only case the sports tribunal will have to listen to in the coming days, though, with Serie B club Pisa set to face punishment and potentially exclusion from the division if they go ahead with their threat to postpone their second league fixture of the season.
The Tuscan club are in the midst of a takeover which saw them successfully request that their opening Serie B fixture of the season be postponed.
A similar request to postpone their scheduled fixture with Novara at the weekend would not go down at all well, according to the president of the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) Carlo Tavecchio.
"The question of Pisa does not depend on the FIGC -- I gave my backing to the Lega Serie B to allow them to revive a rule which enabled them to give the club the possibility to put back one game, but they cannot put back a second," Tavecchio said at a news conference in Coverciano.
"If they don't find a solution in the next few days, the FIGC will take due note and consequently not permit any more extensions."
The result would be Pisa's exclusion from the Serie B season.