The president of the League at the Social Football Summit: “The stadiums are the main problem, it can be dealt with by the owned facilities and with a government that really takes care of it”
– Rome
The future of Serie A between sustainability, renovated stadiums, regulations to be changed, TV rights and messages against all types of discrimination. The president of the Football League Lorenzo Casini spoke on the second day of the Social Football Summit at the Olympic stadium in Rome, underlining how football remains a fundamental resource for the country. “In the medium to long term I hope for a regulatory framework that really helps Serie A. Removing the Growth Decree now, for example, would be damaging. We are waiting to collect data and understand whether it worked or not”, says the president, who then adds: “Even on betting, it is unthinkable that nothing of what it produces goes to football. We are talking about over a million euros paid to the State.”
infrastructure
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Chapter stages. For Casini “they are the main problem. They are a problem for Serie A, but not the fault of Serie A. The removal of responsibility from the institutional authorities is not acceptable. The clubs have some responsibility because in the 80s, when the money was there, they did not exploit it for the infrastructures, just look at the Italia 90 facilities. Even today in reality the resources are there, see Milan or Bologna, the issue is bureaucratic, it is the inability of public entities to speed up the work. How to get out of it? Going towards owned stadiums and having a government alongside us that really takes care of it with ad hoc working groups. Minister Abodi? We have excellent relations with him but here we go further, Infrastructure, Culture are involved… Everyone’s collaboration is needed. Will Euro 2032 help? As Abodi says, the European Championship is a great opportunity but not the only way to solve the stadium problem. And as Malagò says, the commissioner is welcome but he must have the powers to change things.”
new rules
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Casini then focused on the opportunity to make football more attractive for new generations, “who are no longer able to see a film in its entirety, not even a laugh-out-loud film like ‘All We Can Do is Cry’, they would find it slow. In this sense, an effort is needed in innovations also in the regulation. This is one of the most important challenges, the world leagues are talking about it and, for example, temporary expulsions like water polo are being considered. These are necessary experiments, but when will they be experimented given that the friendlies are no longer there? In fact, we play too much, we just have to do it in the youth championships where offside is already being experimented with with the light space which should solve the problem of millimetric offside, just as the problem of wasting time must be corrected.”
TV rights
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And on TV rights: “It was a detailed and complex negotiation, we managed to secure a sector that needed stability in revenue. At a national level it was difficult to imagine doing better, while abroad there has already been an increase because we managed to remove regulatory constraints that until now had been too binding”.
next to women
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The president then recalled the strategies, in line with that of the UN, with precise objectives by 2030, “including that of no longer having racist and discriminatory chants in stadiums”. And on the topic of violence against women he said: “We have entered a different phase, now it is men who have to do their part and in this sense football can be a fundamental vehicle”.
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