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2026 FIFA World Cup
19APR

Malago wins the vote to rebuild Italy

4 min read
11:22UTC

Giovanni Malago took 68.58% of the weighted FIGC vote in Rome against Giancarlo Abete's 29.17%, far wider than the pre-vote split, to lead a federation absent from the World Cup.

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Key takeaway

Malago's landslide gives him a mandate to rebuild Italy's federation and find a new coach.

Giovanni Malago won the presidency of the FIGC (Federazione Italiana Giuoco Calcio), Italy's football federation, on 22 June with 68.58% of the weighted vote against Giancarlo Abete's 29.17%. 1 He took 343,084 weighted votes to Abete's 145,936, with 266 of 273 delegates present at the Rome Cavalieri. 2 The margin was far wider than the 54/46 split the federation's leagues had signalled going in , a scale that hands him a clearer mandate than the contest's framing had predicted.

Malago ran CONI (Comitato Olimpico Nazionale Italiano), Italy's Olympic committee, from 2013 to 2025, and replaces Gabriele Gravina, who resigned after Italy failed to reach the 2026 finals. His first task is naming a national-team head coach, a job he says he has not yet discussed with anyone. 3 The harder file is roughly 5.5 billion euros of collective club debt that only Parliament can address, which is why the clubs backed an administrator with cross-bench access. Malago and Abete agreed Italy has too many professional clubs and split on the cure: Abete wanted to shrink the leagues, while Malago prefers stricter licensing to thin the field without restructuring the divisions. 4

Deep Analysis

In plain English

The FIGC (Federazione Italiana Giuoco Calcio) is the organisation that runs football in Italy, like the FA does in England. On 22 June in Rome, Italian football held an election to choose its new president. The election was called because Gabriele Gravina, the previous FIGC president, resigned after Italy failed to qualify for the 2026 World Cup. Giovanni Malago, who ran Italy's Olympic Committee for 12 years, won with 68.58% of the vote, a much bigger margin than expected. His main rival, Giancarlo Abete, who was also FIGC president from 2007 to 2014, received 29.17%. The big challenge for Malago is that Italian professional clubs collectively owe around €5.5 billion in debt, which makes it harder to invest in youth development and fix the problems that led to Italy missing the World Cup.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

Italy's non-qualification for the 2026 World Cup, the direct trigger for Gravina's resignation, reflects a structural production failure in the Italian youth development system rather than a single coaching or selection error.

Deloitte's Football Finance data shows Serie A clubs spent on average 68% of revenue on wages in 2024, leaving less than 10% of club budgets available for academy infrastructure investment. Italian Under-21 squads have finished outside the top six of the European Under-21 Championship in each of the last three editions, a proxy measure for youth talent production.

The €5.5 billion in collective professional club debt compounds this by directing available cash to debt servicing rather than academy reinvestment. Malago's election mandate is to address both the governance vacuum created by Gravina's resignation and the structural financial conditions that have hollowed out Italian domestic youth football for fifteen years.

What could happen next?
  • Consequence

    Malago's commanding 68.58% mandate gives him a stronger delegate base than any FIGC president since 2010, reducing the risk that the major indebted clubs can block his first-term licensing reforms.

  • Risk

    Without a Serie A broadcast rights increase in 2027, the debt-to-revenue ratio at the five most indebted clubs will exceed 80%, making voluntary federation compliance agreements structurally unstable.

Sources:FIGC·Il Sole 24 Ore·AdnKronos / Corriere dello Sport
Mentions:Giovanni Malagò →FIGC →Giancarlo Abete →Gabriele Gravina →CONI →Italy →UEFA →World Cup →England →Russia →Germany →Rome →Serie A →
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Causes and effects
Caused by
Italy votes for a FIGC president
The 22 June FIGC presidential vote, set up after ANAC cleared Malago, produced a 68.58% victory that far exceeded the pre-vote 54/46 estimate.
Occurred 20 Jun 2026
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This Event
Malago wins the vote to rebuild Italy
Italy's federation, absent from the 2026 finals, has a decision-maker for its empty coaching seat and its 5.5bn euro club-debt file for the first time in months.
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