Casini: “Stadiums, bureaucratic and authorization problem”

From our correspondent Luca Bianchin

March 2nd
– London (UK)

“Football in Italy is the mirror of the country. Italy has a problem with public infrastructures, so the stadium issue is also complex. The problem is not legislative and it is not economic, but bureaucratic. A problem of authorisations”.

Lorenzo Casini, president of the Serie A League, was among the interviewees of the Business of Football Summit organized in London by the Financial Times. The question on owned stadiums is inevitable, the topic of the moment with the future of San Siro at the center of the debate. “We have tried to elaborate dossiers on single aspects and single systems, to facilitate the construction of the stadiums, identify the problems and bring them to the Government – said Casini -. We hope to speed up the process. We were lucky that the Minister of Sport, Andrea Abodi, was in the past the president of Credito Sportivo”.

NEW RULES

—

Casini explained how the improvement of infrastructures is one of the three pillars on which his mandate is articulated, the most important. The others are resources – trivially, increasing revenues – and sporting culture, to be conveyed through top-level football. As far as the economic aspect is concerned, the focus is (also) on TV rights: “We expect to significantly improve the profit from the sale of TV rights. So many American club owners in Italy? The variety of owners is good for the system. They brought skills we didn’t have.” And speaking of the future of football and Serie A, Casini has hinted that he wants to bring a series of proposals at an international level for the improvement of the game, changes to the regulation to be studied to try and make football more interesting for generation Z: “It’s not us who decide the rules, but I think it’s right to make proposals to make football interesting for young people and new generations”. Casini cited as examples the rule on the back pass to the goalkeeper (1992) and the recent regulatory changes that have improved the appeal of Formula 1.

SUPERALLOY

—

Casini also spoke of the Serie A media company (“We are already a media company, which is one of the reasons why we were among the first to use goal line technology”) and hypothesized an institutional reform that “will not follow the Bundesliga model”. Basically, the League already produces its own content and is growing at a technological level but it must give itself a legal form in step with the times. On the sidelines, the curiosity about the outcome of the SuperLega affair, which is always among the most debated topics at the ‘Financial Times’ Summit: “We need to understand the reasons why that idea was born. I am very curious to know the answer of the Court of Justice of the European Union. Is there a conflict of interest in UEFA, which is the regulatory body and at the same time the competition manager? I don’t have an answer.”