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Conte asks, Tavecchio responds. As I pondered in a piece on December 23 , Conte’s “furiousness” about the scheduled end of 2015-16 Serie A (May 22, 2016) is responded in turn by Tavecchio: “A European tournament cannot be prepared in 18 days. The average is 28.8 days. I will personally request an earlier end to the season” , he told Milanese daily Corriere della Sera . Such a request may become moot for future tournaments, should Tavecchio’s “mother of all reforms” be passed. In fact, the FIGC president wants to finalize a decision to contract Serie A to 18 teams and Serie B to 20 by June 30, 2015. The change would take effect as of the 2016-17 season. The additional time that a 34-game tournament would afford could be used for the cementing of the national team group of players through minicamps – which the FIGC would prefer – or for players to rest and recuperate their energy – ostensively, the clubs preference. One solution only sets up another fight between nation...

Italian national team coach Antonio Conte is reportedly furious about the lack of time that he will have at the end of 2015-16 to prepare the azzurri for the upcoming Euros. Serie A is slated to end on May 22, 2016 which is a week after the Bundesliga and La Liga, and two weeks after the English Premier League. This only exacerbates the friction between clubs and the national team that’s brewing as a result of the proposed minicamps the first of which is to take place a week prior to the resumption of UEFA club competitions. FIGC president Carlo Tavecchio supports Conte on the minicamps but has amended his position stating that it will be up to the clubs to allow their players to attend the minicamps since the clubs are not obliged to lend their players to the national team because the minicamps are outside the dates imposed by FIFA for national team activity. One can empathize with Conte’s position, which might go something like: “I have a group that is in an embryonic sta...

Walk into any bar of any Italian town, and you'll see a copy of the local newspaper, one or two sports dailies, and a gentleman speaking to the bar owner about the officiating injustice that is condemning his favourite team. It seems everyone, except top sporting brass - including Blatter - are against ending this scene. Except Italian FA's top boss, Carlo Tavecchio. In October, he wrote an open letter to FIFA asking them to use the Italian top flight as a testing ground for new technology.  Today, Tavecchio took cue from yesterday's goal-line clearance at the San Siro to restate his case: "the debate that has arisen on the in-field use of technology shows how appropriate our request to FIFA was on October 9" . "On that day, we stated our availability to use goal-line technology and to experiment instruments that indicate with certainty and immediacy the positioning of the football in boarderline fouls near the big box" , reports t...

Antonio Conte and Carlo Tavecchio Days after Antonio Conte's public intimation of feeling abandoned from the Italian footballing world as national team coach, the FIGC introduced measures to spur growth of available talent for the nazionale . To recapitulate, the measures will mirror Champions/Europa League roster limits (25 players of which 4 must be home grown, and another 4 must be grown in Italy), and place conditions (such as national team appearances) on a second incoming non-EU player from a foreign league. Ostensibly, these reforms are meant to bolster playing time for Italian talent, thereby expanding the universe of players available to the national team. In my opinion, these reforms will not have the intended effect, are feeble at best, and ascribe to a small-minded defeatist philosophy.  Specifically, the reforms by Tavecchio will likely have: 1. a small, positive effect on improving the breadth (quantity) of Italian national team players, but unlikely to have a ...

Today newly elected president Carlo Tavecchio presented Antonio Conte as new Azzurri coach at the FIGC's (Italian Federation's) headquarters. Highlights from the press conference: Tavecchio: "The first phone call with Conte didn't end with his assent [to take on the role of coach]. I had to insist to create this energy with one of the best coaches in Europe. The second and third phone call gave me certainty that Conte would have accepted. The Nazionale is FIGC's biggest asset: choosing excellence was a must in order to emerge from this last World Cup. We needed a leader, a commander like Conte that may make us feel united and strong when the Italian national anthem is playing [before kickoff]" . Conte: " I can't deny I'm excited, because any coach in the world would like to be in my place, to represent Italy , which with Brazil is among the most important national teams in the world. I'm proud that president Tavecchio thought of me...

The epilogue of the Italian football federation’s (FIGC) presidency ended according to script with 71-year old amateur league president Carlo Tavecchio as the winner. Tavecchio was declared the winner after three rounds of voting (when only 50%+1 vote was necessary) with 63.63% of the consensus. He had gathered 60% and 63% in the first two rounds, respectively. His rival, Demetrio Albertini, received only 33.95% consensuses in the third and final round. The FIGC vicepresident received 35% and 34% of votes in the first two rounds. “Thank you to all those who supported me throughout this process, especially in the most delicate moments. I will be everyone’s president. Reforms are doable only if united, together”, Tavecchio stated in a brief post-election speech. This election result will likely spell Albertini’s resignation from his current post of FIGC vicepresident very soon. Tavecchio is now charged with the arduous task of fashioning and implementing much needed reforms...

Federazione Italiana Giuoco Calcio (FIGC, the Italian footballing federation) vice president Demetrio Albertini tweeted a statement promising to rescind his candidacy for the presidency of FIGC, should his rival, Carlo Tavecchio, do the same. The latter is stonewalling calls from 9 Serie A clubs asking him to rescind his candidacy. “Not Long Ago, Optí Poba who plays for Lazio was Eating Bananas” Lega Nazionale Dilettanti (LND, Italian Amateur league) president Tavecchio made waves in Italian and international media  when he pointed to “banana eating Africans” as one of the culprits in Italian football’s decay. The statement would automatically rule out any candidate in any race, but not Tavecchio. The unfortunate statement catapulted the anti-Tavecchio sentiment into a movement that began with the non-endorsement of the 71 year old by Juventus and Roma. The two league leaders were joined by 7 other Serie A clubs, who have asked him to rescind his candidacy on the accoun...