The president of the FIGC Gabriele Gravina confirmed that they are working to bring Euro 2032 to Italy, but warned that the budgets of Italian clubs have to be healthier than any company: ‘We are at the antechamber of bankruptcy’. Gravina was present at the Law Department of the University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli in Santa Maria Capua Vetere this morning for a meeting on ‘Football game regulations between theory and practice’, and took the opportunity to make a number of comments on the current state of Italian football: ‘
“We are working in Rome to bring Euro 2032 to Italy. It will be one of the ways to solve one of football’s big problems, that of infrastructure. We are trying to unite the closed and self-referential world of football. This process of working with the academic world can only do good. A new humanism in sport that can only turn us around in the short term.
“There are rules on and off the pitch that represent for different reasons the safeguarding of sporting competitiveness. The budgets of football clubs must be much fairer and healthier than the budgets of other companies. Managers must behave fairly and uprightly.
“Economics and football have many points in common. In a world like football that seems so distant, we must restore the concept that economics is not detached from ethics and politics. Some of our interlocutors do not know some of our data.
‘The world of football is waking up, it accounts for 0.58% of our country’s GDP. 20% of young people are registered with the FIGC. Every 55 seconds there is a football match in Italy. We pay €1.3 billion a year to the state.
“When football cries out for help, it is not because it is asking for welfarism, but because of its correct positioning in the industry of this country. What crisis is football going through? The crisis is a collapse by implosion of a system. We need to find a new sense, it is not solved by a change of rules or a ban. We need a total change of direction, otherwise we will have a devastating implosive effect. If we think that everything will be solved by increasing revenues, we are off track. If the Lega di A were to produce more resources for everyone, that is not enough.
“We know very well that when it comes to growth, raising the value of production (like the English model) is not the answer, but bringing costs under control.
“We are at the antechamber of bankruptcy. The reform is not of the championships, but of football. We must look ourselves in the face, be consistent. Be visionary and passionate, but also with a sense of responsibility. We must restore a fundamental equation, restoring the relationship between economics and ethics. If economics uses politics as a means to an end, then we have got it all wrong. We must confront each other in an open manner, without putting the interest of the individual at the centre, but that of the system.”
