Gravina refuses to stay quiet

Gabriele Gravina is no longer president of the FIGC, but he is still very much in the argument. After resigning under pressure from the government and public opinion, the former federation chief has released a 12-page document that lays out, in unusually blunt terms, what he sees as the real causes of Italian football's collapse.

The paper was meant to be presented to the Chamber of Deputies' VII Commission for Culture, Science and Education. That hearing was scheduled right after the national team's latest disaster, but it was cancelled once Gravina stepped down, as if removing the chairman somehow fixed the rest of the house. Italian football, naturally, remains deeply committed to the idea that paperwork is optional when the optics get bad.

So Gravina published the report anyway.

Too few Italians, too few young players

One of the strongest themes in the dossier is the shrinking space for Italian and underage players in Serie A. According to the FIGC, 67.9% of all minutes in the league are played by footballers who are not eligible for the national team. That is the sixth-worst figure in Europe.

Spain, by comparison, sits at 39.6%.

At matchday 31, out of 284 players who had played at least 30 minutes, only 89 were Italian, including 10 goalkeepers. Serie A also has an average age of 27, making it the eighth-oldest top-flight league in Europe.

The report goes further. Italy ranks last for total revenue generated over the last decade from international transfers involving players trained in the country. In plain English: the export value of Italian-developed talent is close to zero.

Only Atalanta and Juventus appear in the global top 50 for youth systems by decade-long transfer revenue from academy products. Inter are 53rd. Not coincidentally, these clubs all have a reserve team structure, which Gravina has repeatedly defended and which parts of the system have often treated as a nuisance rather than a tool.

Serie A is also 49th out of 50 monitored leagues for the share of minutes played by U21 players eligible for the national team, at just 1.9%.

The broader issue, according to the FIGC, is not only that young players are not used enough, but that those developed through the federation's youth system later find too little space in senior football. Gravina cites the Spanish players from the 2023 Under-19 European Championship, won by Italy, as an example: they no longer play in youth competitions, and their minutes in first division football and European club matches are nearly double and nearly six times higher, respectively, than those of their Italian counterparts.

Gravina also underlines a legal limit that has long frustrated the federation: any rule requiring clubs to field a minimum number of Italian players, or in general any regulation that discriminates based on nationality, is described as "impossible to implement because it goes against the principle of free movement of workers."

So the FIGC cannot simply decree a solution and call it leadership. It can only ask for cooperation, which in Italian football is often treated as a decorative concept.

A game that runs less and slower

The document also attacks the style and intensity of the domestic game.

Serie A does not appear among the top 10 European leagues for sprint distance covered. It also has a much slower average ball speed in matches, at 7.6 metres per second, compared with 10.4 in the Champions League and 9.2 in the main European leagues.

Italy is last in the number of dribbles per match, with 26.69, and also bottom of the list for aggression in pressing phases.

The conclusion is not subtle: Italian football lacks talent, unpredictability, physicality, and endurance, all qualities that tend to matter when the stakes rise beyond domestic routine.

The financial hole is still there

Gravina also describes the system as "economically unsustainable" because the money it generates does not cover its costs.

Between the 1986/87 and 2024/25 seasons, 194 clubs were denied admission to the professional leagues because of economic and financial failures. Over the last 13 years, clubs have also been hit with 519 points of deductions. The Italian game still loses more than 730 million euros a year.

The pandemic years made things worse. Across the three seasons affected by Covid, Italian professional clubs lost 3.6 billion euros. Over the past five years, labour costs have risen in every category.

Even after several measures approved by the federal council, debt remains slightly above the pre-Covid level, with total debt at 5.5 billion euros and liabilities equal to 80.6% of total assets.

The long-term trend is not encouraging. In 2007/08, combined revenues could cover 97% of total debt. In 2023/24, that figure had dropped to 83%.

Then there is the small matter of spending habits. In 2025, agent commissions reached a record high of more than 300 million euros.

Italy also has too many professional clubs for the resources available. With 97 clubs, it trails only Mexico, Turkey, Argentina, Thailand, and Saudi Arabia in the global ranking.

Stadiums, bureaucracy, and the limits of reform

The infrastructure problem is just as familiar as it is unresolved. Italy is not among the top 10 European countries for the number of stadiums built or modernised between 2007 and 2024.

Bureaucracy, as usual, makes life difficult for anyone willing to invest.

The FIGC says the situation was worsened by Legislative Decree 36/2021, which abolished the sporting bond, causing what the federation describes as "probably irreversible damage" to youth development and to the growth of players who could have helped the national team.

The leagues also enjoy substantial autonomy under the so-called Mulè amendment, including a sort of veto-like right of agreement over major issues such as the National Licences system for admission to competitions. That makes structural reform extremely difficult, especially on the most obvious front: reducing Serie A and Serie B to 18 teams and shrinking the professional area in Serie C.

In February 2026, Gravina handed the federation components the 17th draft of his reform work on that issue. The number itself tells you plenty about how far the process has got.

Politics, funding, and the case of Euro 2032

One of Gravina's sharper criticisms is directed at politics, especially the lack of dedicated funding for Euro 2032.

In the report, he notes that no similar financial backing has been made available for the tournament, unlike other major events with lower social and media impact, such as the Milan-Cortina Olympics, the America's Cup in Naples, or the Mediterranean Games in Taranto, all of which received multi-billion-euro funding.

He also points to the costs of transitioning women's football to professionalism, which were not sustained after an initial short-term measure.

What Gravina says must happen next

Although he remains in office in a caretaker capacity until 22 June, when new elections are due, Gravina has outlined a list of possible reforms he wants carried forward.

Among them:

  • A share of betting rights, with strict earmarks for infrastructure, youth development, and anti-gambling addiction measures
  • Tax credits, modelled on those used in the film industry
  • The restoration of tax relief for professionals arriving from abroad
  • The removal of the ban on advertising and sponsorship for betting operators
  • Incentives for building new stadiums or upgrading existing ones
  • Recognition of federations as "social enterprises"
  • Reform of the leagues and the refereeing system
  • A technical plan to revive youth football, presented shortly before the debacle in Zenica

His final point is less a policy paper than a challenge to the entire sector. What is needed, he writes, is "unity of purpose that goes beyond what is convenient and expedient," along with a "firm and unanimous willingness to put the common good ahead of defending one's own position."

In other words, the recipe is simple enough. The problem is persuading Italian football to read it.