In the World Cup’s missing country, failure sparks bitter political battle
ROME — Donald Trump isn't the only problem on Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's mind.
Failure to qualify for the FIFA men’s World Cup for the third consecutive time triggered a major political and public outcry in the football-obsessed country that has now morphed into a bitter fight over who controls the sport.
Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party leaped to propose curtailing the power of the country’s football association — the Federazione Italiana Giuoco Calcio (FIGC) — after its president, the 72-year-old Gabriele Gravina, resigned in April under heavy pressure following a World Cup playoff defeat to Bosnia-Herzegovina.
With new elections to run the FIGC slated for June 22, Meloni’s allies are pushing to call off the vote and place the body under special administration — an emergency procedure used in the past for the sport to overcome major corruption scandals.
In a country where football carries outsized cultural weight, Italy’s World Cup embarrassment has become a proxy battle over governance, reforms, investment and the Meloni administration’s willingness to extend political influence into independent institutions.
“The first concern should not be new elections; it is not through elections that you create the conditions for a rebound,” Italian Sports Minister Andrea Abodi said in an interview with POLITICO.
Football officials have denounced the government intervention as a power play to block the heavy favorite, Giovanni Malagò, a former president of the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) who is disliked by Meloni’s party.
“The idea of placing it [the FIGC] under administration, to me, only suggests an occupation [by the government]; it offers no kind of perspective for the future,” Gravina told POLITICO from his Rome office, adorned by two twinkling World Cup trophies and other relics from a bygone era of glory. “The idea of taking over the football world has been circulating for far too long now,” he added.
Opposition parties have accused Meloni of centralizing control, stifling dissent and putting acolytes in positions of power, a pattern they observe in Italy’s state-owned television network, financial markets supervisor and judicial system.
But the government rejects that it wants to extend its reach to the FIGC. “It is a pathetic and baseless claim. There is no element that could be seen as an attempt by politics to take over this domain,” Abodi said.
