By Mark Baber
January 15 – Giancarlo Abete has been re-elected as President of the Italian Football Federation (FIGC), winning 94.34% of the vote in the FIGC Elective Assembly in an uncontested election yesterday.
Abete will now continue to lead the FIGC for the next four years, having first taken up the post in April 2007.
In the electoral college, of 288 eligible voters, 256 registered and 250 expressed their vote. 5.66% of the ballots were blank.
Abete received unanimous votes from the A League (18 out of 18), the Italian coaches Association (24 out of 24) and the Italian Referees Association (9 out of 9), 18 of the 19 votes from the B League, 79 of the 88 from the National Amateur League and 43 of the 44 votes of the players association.
Before voting, Abete announced that this would be his last nomination and defended the world of football within the context of a country in economic difficulties.
“We have to be self-critical, but football is not the source of all the evil in this country. We are competitive at an international level. Italy is fourth in the FIFA rankings, so we have to refute generalizations, demonization and defamation,” said Abete.
“We receive contributions of €64 million and none of these go to the professional clubs which pay €900 million in taxes to the State. We are not part of the debt burden of this country.”
To politicians who have recently failed to pass a law on stadiums he said, “We did not ask for money, just for smoother procedures.”
On the betting scandal he said: “We have been through 20 months of investigation and more months will follow.” The objective was to achieve justice at all levels and “limited duration” trials.
In another speech before the vote Marcello Nicchi, president of the Italian Referees Association (AIA) said following a recent incident in which a referee was injured:
“If we stop football for racism, we have to stop it also for violence against referees.” “We have to worry about the safety of our referees, this situation is no longer tolerable.”
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