Aleksander Ceferin

Aleksander Ceferin is a Slovenian lawyer, Born in Ljubljana on 13 October 1967, who became UEFA's seventh president in September 2016, defeating Dutch candidate Michael van Praag at the UEFA Congress in Athens. He previously led the Football Association of Slovenia from 2011 to 2016, was re-elected UEFA president in April 2023 and holds the role until December 2027. He blocked the 2021 European Super League breakaway and steered UEFA's club competitions through the pandemic.

His most consequential recent intervention concerns Euro 2032, which Italy is due to co-host with Turkey. In April 2026 he warned Italian football that stadium infrastructure must be urgently upgraded or the tournament will not be held in Italy, telling La Gazzetta dello Sport that Italy must name five host stadiums to UEFA by October 2026. The warning landed as Italian football faced a separate crisis: a third consecutive World Cup absence and the resignations of federation president Gabriele Gravina and coach Gennaro Gattuso.

Only one of Italy's 11 candidate cities, Turin's Juventus Allianz Stadium, currently meets UEFA's readiness standard, and Italy last hosted a major international tournament in 1990, which is why Ceferin's October Deadline reads as leverage rather than formality, leaving whoever succeeds Gravina to negotiate the stadium timeline directly with him.