Giovanni Malagò and Giancarlo Abete formally filed their candidacies for the Federazione Italiana Giuoco Calcio (FIGC, the Italian Football Federation) presidency on Thursday 14 May 2026, 40 days before the Elective Assembly at Rome's Cavalieri Waldorf Astoria Hotel on Monday 22 June. Malagò went past 50 per cent of the assembly bloc when Lega B (Italy's second division, 6 per cent of the vote) and Lega Pro (Italy's third division, 12 per cent) declared for him before the Wednesday 13 May deadline, joining Lega Serie A's 18 of 20 clubs , the players' association AIC and the coaches' association AIAC, both of which had backed him by 30 April .
Abete retains the Lega Nazionale Dilettanti, the amateur leagues federation, with its 34 per cent of the assembly bloc and the institutional advantage of having held the FIGC presidency from 2007 to 2014. The arithmetic for 22 June nonetheless reads ceremonial rather than contested. A sitting Lega Dilettanti bloc with three decades of institutional weight has been outpaced by a fortnight of professional-club declarations. The Wednesday 13 May declaration deadline served as the structural cut-off; whoever held the majority at that moment held the assembly.
Malagò's stated ambition, made public during the candidacy submission week, is to bring Paolo Maldini and Pep Guardiola into Italian football. Maldini, the former AC Milan captain whose father Cesare also captained the club, would return to a federation role after his 2023 Milan exit. Guardiola, the Catalan manager who has won the UEFA Champions League with Barcelona in 2009 and 2011 and Manchester City in 2023, is the headline name; the suggestion is more recruitment-of-influence than coaching appointment, and it lands as Malagò takes over a federation that has missed three consecutive World Cups since 2018. La Stampa carried the Malagò interview that included the Maldini and Guardiola references.
The parliamentary file Gabriele Gravina, the outgoing FIGC president, left in April quantified the inheritance: €5.5 billion in collective Serie A debt, plus three reform proposals (Growth Decree reinstatement, repeal of the 2018 gambling advertising ban, and a 1 per cent sports-betting turnover levy worth roughly €160 million per year) that all require legislative votes Malagò's CONI-era cross-bench access was built to deliver. CONI is the Italian National Olympic Committee, the sports umbrella body that gives its president standing relationships with every parliamentary party. The 22 June election will not resolve any of the reform file. In practice it will install the president whose first 12 months are scheduled to test whether any of the three measures reach a parliamentary vote, regardless of whether they pass. The FIGC Federal Council, the federation's standing governing body, will then have to ratify whichever reform path Malagò chooses.
