Lega Serie B, Italy's second-division league, confirmed its backing for Giovanni Malagò on 20 June, two days before the FIGC presidential election. 1 The FIGC is Italy's football federation; Malagò, a former Italian Olympic Committee president, now holds Serie A, the players' association and the coaches' association alongside Serie B, giving him 54% of the 273 voting delegates on paper. Giancarlo Abete, a former FIGC president, holds Lega Pro and Lega Dilettanti, the third-tier professional and the amateur leagues, for the remaining 46%. A third candidate, Renato Miele, was rejected for insufficient delegate backing.
The race had already narrowed to two after Italy's anti-corruption authority cleared Malagò's eligibility on 18 June , removing the revolving-door objection that the sports minister had raised. The 54% figure is a count of declared endorsements, not cast ballots, and Italian federation votes run up to three rounds in which blocs can fracture on the floor.
The arithmetic settles the election; it does not settle the job. Whoever wins inherits roughly 5.5 billion euros of collective debt across Italy's professional clubs, a structural problem that sits beyond a federation president's powers. Clearing it would require acts of the Italian parliament, on tax treatment, on stadium financing, on club ownership rules, and neither candidate has set out a route to passing them. Malagò would arrive with the delegates lined up behind him and the one lever that matters, the legislature, entirely outside his reach.
