Malagò: ‘More resources for Paris, but ordinary activity is also at risk’

Full day at the Foro Italico between the council and the national council of CONI. With one topic that takes over: the money that isn’t there or is little. Few not only for the Paris Olympic expedition, but also for everyday life. President Giovanni Malagò reports the opinion of the auditors: “They told us: ‘you can’t go on like this, ordinary activity is at risk’…”. The auditor Alberto De Nigro says: “It is equally necessary to point out that the structure of costs and revenues currently in force for Coni, net of extraordinary forms of contributions, projected over a medium and long term horizon, does not allow it to be possible to plan the ordinary activities of maintaining assets according to the standards required by the regulations and planning the Institution’s institutional activities on the basis of certain resources”.

“Who makes me do this?”

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Coni receives 45 million euros annually for its functioning, while the disbursement of funds to sports bodies, federations and promotion bodies in particular, is the responsibility of Sport and Health which draws from the other 363 of the public allocation (which corresponds to 32 per cent percent of the tax revenue from the sports sector in Italy). After that division of resources, sanctioned by the Stability Law of 2018 (precisely the division was initially 368 plus 40, then changed), CONI however recovered its administrative autonomy, an objective strongly desired and supported on several occasions by the IOC, with the awareness, however, that all this would also bring new management and economic commitments, in short new expenses: “But it is not taken into account – says Malagò – that in the meantime there has been inflation, an increase in costs and the fact that we have become owners of a real estate that we have to maintain. At this point I think: ‘but who makes me do it?’. Also adding an example: “Do you know how we paid the costs to complete the multisports hall in the Giulio Onesti centre? Taking resources from the estate. Do you think it’s possible?”

For Paris

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In particular, CONI would have liked the supplementary financing to finance the various Olympic expeditions to become “structural”. For Paris 2024, the general secretary Carlo Mornati with his offices has calculated an expense of 19 million euros (this is not just logistical-organizational expenses, there is also the aspect of prizes for the medals). The government, in particular the Ministry of Economy, has instead foreseen, given the general difficulties of the country, at least for the moment, a budget of 13 million euros, of which 3, however, will go to the Paralympic expedition. But above all it did not choose the path of “structural” support, that is, consolidated, so to speak, for all years, but by tying it to the Olympic years. We’ll see if there is any news in the next few days.

Technical risk

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Meanwhile Angelo Cito, president of taekwondo, raises the alarm again: “I am worried about the issue of military technicians and I also expressed this in a meeting with the sports minister Andrea Abodi. It is urgent that the situation be clarified because we have technicians that we can’t use, that we haven’t been able to pay since July, because we don’t know how to pay them.” The reference is to a rule of the corrective decrees of the sports work reform which regulates the performance of technicians belonging to military sports groups. “The entire technical staff of the national team cannot be used in a very delicate period because the qualifiers end in December.” For Malagò “it is madness, but I am convinced that Abodi is the first to be surprised, in good faith, by this story”.