Malagò under scrutiny over FIGC presidential election: membership dispute opens new institutional risk
Italian football is facing a new institutional dispute just two months after Giovanni Malagò was elected president of the Italian Football Federation (FIGC). At the center of the case is not the election result, but a precise question arising from the statutes: did Malagò, at the time he submitted his candidacy, have valid membership, or registration, with the FIGC. Under Article 29 of the FIGC Statutes, to be elected or appointed to federal office, a candidate must be duly registered on the date the candidacy is submitted. It is precisely this information that the General Sports Prosecutor's Office at the Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI) has asked to be verified, following months of objections by lawyer and former footballer Renato Miele. During the electoral process, the FIGC officially announced that Malagò met all the prescribed requirements, but the dispute over the date and legal validity of his membership was not decided on the merits in earlier sports justice proceedings.
The main issue is the date from which Malagò's membership was valid
Article 29 of the FIGC Statutes provides that persons elected or appointed to federal positions must be "in compliance with the membership rules on the date the candidacy is submitted". This means that in this case it is not enough merely to establish whether Malagò became a member of the federation at some point, but also the exact date from which his status produced legal effects. According to a document reported on by the Italian media, the General Sports Prosecutor's Office, headed by Chief Prosecutor Ugo Taucer, asked the FIGC Prosecutor's Office to open the appropriate proceedings, obtain documentation concerning Malagò's registration and determine its starting date. The key task for the federal prosecutor's office is therefore to reconstruct the administrative trail of the registration and compare it with the deadlines in the electoral procedure. Until that work is completed, there is no official conclusion that Malagò was ineligible to stand as a candidate or that his candidacy was invalid.
On 14 May, the FIGC announced that the candidacies of Giovanni Malagò and Giancarlo Abete had been accepted for the electoral assembly scheduled for 22 June. The same announcement stated that Malagò had the support of more than half of the Serie A delegates and that he possessed all the requirements demanded by the FIGC Statutes. Renato Miele, the third aspirant for the presidential position, was not admitted to the election because he had not secured the required support of at least half plus one of the delegates from at least one league or technical component. Miele then challenged both his own exclusion and the admissibility of the candidacies of Malagò and Abete. It was precisely from that dispute that the question of registration emerged, and it has now once again come before the bodies of sports justice.
Earlier court proceedings did not provide a final answer on the disputed membership
On 8 June, the FIGC National Federal Court declared Miele's first application partly unfounded and partly inadmissible. The Federal Court of Appeal then rejected his appeal on 18 June, leaving Malagò and Abete as the only candidates in the race. After the election, Miele continued the proceedings before the CONI Sports Guarantee Board, the highest body of Italian sports justice for this type of dispute. On 15 July, the Board declared his application inadmissible. That decision, however, is not the same as a finding that Malagò actually had valid registration on the relevant date: a procedural dismissal of an application may mean that the court did not reach the merits of the key factual allegation.
It is precisely this distinction on which the new initiative by the General Sports Prosecutor's Office is based. According to reports from a document dated 15 July cited by the Italian media, the General Prosecutor's Office pointed out that no objective documents had been presented that would definitively prove the disputed status and requested that the facts be verified through the competent prosecutorial proceedings. This moves the matter from the area of appeals concerning the electoral procedure toward a direct examination of official documentation. For Malagò, this is an important distinction: the question is no longer merely whether Miele had the procedural right to challenge his candidacy, but whether there is a document confirming that the statutory requirement was fulfilled at the correct time.
Malagò was elected by a convincing majority of votes
Giovanni Malagò was elected president of the FIGC on 22 June 2026 at the electoral assembly in Rome. According to the Federation's official figures, he won 68,58 percent of the vote, or 343,084 weighted votes, while Giancarlo Abete received 29,17 percent. Malagò thus succeeded Gabriele Gravina, who left office after yet another failure by the Italian national team in the qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup. After the election, UEFA announced that Malagò had been elected for a term lasting until 2028. His arrival at the head of the FIGC was presented as an attempt at an institutional and sporting reset of a system facing problems involving the national team, infrastructure, clubs' financial sustainability and the development of domestic players.
Before that, Malagò had served as president of CONI for more than a decade and was one of the most influential figures in Italian sport. He was also involved in organizing the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games and had previously held a number of positions in sports organizations. His candidacy for the FIGC was therefore not the entry of an unknown actor into the football system, but the transfer of one of Italy's best-known sports officials to the leadership of the country's most important national sports federation. Precisely because of that institutional significance, any problem concerning a formal candidacy requirement would have consequences extending far beyond the personal status of the president.
What exactly Renato Miele requested
In the proceedings, Miele argued that Malagò's candidacy should not have been accepted if, on the date it was submitted, there was no valid membership status in the Federation. In the application submitted to the Sports Guarantee Board, he requested, among other things, the suspension of the decision of the electoral assembly of 22 June, a ban on Malagò performing presidential functions, the provision of confirmation of his membership and documentation from the electoral proceedings, and the annulment of the election. Alternatively, he requested that the electoral procedure be repeated. CONI officially confirmed the content of that application, but on 15 July the Board declared the case inadmissible, without annulling Malagò's election.
This is important for understanding the current status of the case. Malagò remains president of the FIGC, his powers have not been suspended and there is no final decision declaring the election of 22 June null and void. The new review therefore does not mean that Italian football has already entered a formal state of extraordinary administration or that the president's decisions have automatically lost their legal effect. It does, however, open the possibility of a serious dispute if the documentation shows that the statutory requirement was not fulfilled at the time when it was required.
Possible consequences depend on the prosecutor's findings and subsequent decisions
If the FIGC Prosecutor's Office confirms that Malagò was duly registered on the relevant date, with a membership start date preceding or corresponding to the time the candidacy was submitted, the central claim on which the dispute is based would be significantly weakened. In that case, the political and procedural controversy would remain, but the key statutory requirement would be confirmed by documentation. If, on the other hand, it were established that membership did not exist or began only after the candidacy had been submitted, a considerably more complex question would arise concerning the consequences for the admissibility of the candidacy and the validity of the election. This would not be decided by media interpretation, but by the competent bodies of sports justice and, depending on further legal steps, potentially also by the administrative courts.
A particularly sensitive question would be what would happen to decisions signed after 22 June. Public commentary has raised the possibility that a challenge to the president's status could also affect acts adopted during his term, including decisions related to the management of the national team. Such an effect, however, should not be presented in advance as automatic. The legal consequences of any invalidity of the election would depend on the content of the decision by the competent body, the FIGC's rules, the principle of legal certainty and the question of whether individual acts can remain valid independently of the status of the person who signed them. At present, there is no decision annulling Malagò's acts.
The FIGC is already under intense sporting pressure
The dispute comes at a time when Italian football, even without the institutional issue, is facing significant pressure. Malagò took over the Federation after Italy's third consecutive absence from the World Cup, which opened a debate about player development, professional work, management of the national team and the long-term model of domestic football. According to the FIGC and reports in the Italian media, his electoral program emphasized international competitiveness, financial sustainability, stadium infrastructure and the renewal of the system for developing Italian talent. At such a moment, any uncertainty surrounding the president's legitimacy directly burdens the Federation's ability to implement multi-year changes.
Additional significance comes from the fact that the question does not concern a political assessment of Malagò's work, but an administrative requirement explicitly stated in the statutes. This makes the matter both narrow and potentially very important: the answer may lie in just a few official documents and dates, but the consequences of that answer could affect the entire governance structure. For now, two opposing positions are known. Miele claims that appropriate proof of membership did not exist at the time of the candidacy, while the FIGC stated in its official announcement of the candidacies that Malagò possessed all the necessary requirements. The prosecutor's task is to replace those claims with a verifiable factual finding.
Why the previous confirmations of the candidacy did not end the dispute
Before the election, the FIGC formally accepted Malagò's candidacy, but accepting a candidacy and subsequently carrying out an independent verification of a specific document are not necessarily the same issue. In the Federation's official list of candidacies, it stated that Malagò met all statutory requirements, which is currently the most important institutional confirmation of his status in the electoral procedure. Nevertheless, Miele specifically requested the documentation showing the basis on which that conclusion had been reached and the date from which the registration was valid. Because the earlier courts dealt with his applications mainly through questions of admissibility and procedural standing, the disputed date did not receive an answer that would have brought the further debate to an end.
According to the available information, the General Sports Prosecutor's Office has now asked the Federation to fill that gap through an official determination of the facts. This does not constitute a judgment against Malagò, but a supervisory intervention within the Italian sports justice system. The distinction is also crucial for public interpretation: the term "investigation" in this context refers to a verification procedure within the sports system, not to a confirmed criminal investigation by a state prosecutor's office. As of 20 August 2026, there is no official information that Malagò has been accused of a criminal offence in connection with this issue.
The next step could determine the stability of the entire Federation
In the next phase, the decisive issue will be what the FIGC's records show: whether a valid registration exists, what its starting date is and whether that date meets the requirement under Article 29 of the Statutes. Italian media also report that the continuation of one of Miele's legal proceedings is expected before the Federal Court of Appeal in September, while an administrative dispute before the Regional Administrative Court of Lazio is also mentioned as a possible further avenue. These proceedings may further prolong the uncertainty, but none of them in itself changes the fact that Malagò currently holds the position of president.
For Italian football, the most important thing is therefore to distinguish three levels that are often merged in public debate: the existence of suspicion, the official review, and any eventual decision on the consequences. The suspicion was raised by Miele's objections, an official review has now been requested, while no decision declaring the election invalid exists. If the documentation confirms proper membership, the case could lose its principal legal basis. If it does not, the FIGC could face one of the most serious governance crises of recent years, because questions concerning the presidential mandate, the electoral procedure and the legal fate of decisions adopted after 22 June would all arise simultaneously.
Sources:
- FIGC - official announcement concerning the admitted candidacies for the electoral assembly of 22 June 2026 and confirmation that Malagò meets the statutory requirements (link)
- FIGC - Federation Statutes, Article 29 on the requirements for election and the obligation to have valid registration on the date the candidacy is submitted (link)
- FIGC - decision of the National Federal Court of 8 June 2026 concerning Miele's application (link)
- FIGC - decision of the Federal Court of Appeal of 18 June 2026 rejecting Miele's appeal (link)
- FIGC - official result of the electoral assembly and figures concerning Malagò's victory with 68,58 percent of the vote (link)
- CONI - official publication of the content of Miele's application against the FIGC, Malagò and Abete after the election (link)
- CONI - decision of the Sports Guarantee Board of 15 July 2026 declaring Miele's application inadmissible (link)
- Corriere dello Sport - report of 17 August 2026 concerning the General Sports Prosecutor's Office request to verify Malagò's membership and the date from which it was valid (link)
- UEFA - confirmation of Malagò's election as FIGC president and of the term lasting until 2028 (link)