Gabriele Gravina, president of the FIGC, spoke on various topics at an event at the University of Florence, focusing once again on the issue of the new independent economic and financial control agency for football which the Government wants to introduce in place of the already existing COVISOC. Below are his statements reported by the news agency Italpress.
Gravina says: “What is happening in these hours with this activity, this agency, I consider it “something” perhaps disrespectful towards three magistrates who are part of the current organization of Covisoc, extraordinary professionals, super partes, then we suddenly realize that from today Covisoc is no longer independent when Covisoc historically, history says it and I say it too, has a function assigned by law to ensure that a club starts and reaches the end of the championship”.
The number one of the Football Federation continues and concludes: “Covisoc has no commitment to impact the budget to make you improve or worsen, that is your choice, Covisoc must guarantee our system that you leave and arrive because it must not alter the value of fair competition. I wonder but in all these years there has not been a single case other than one exception involving Pro Piacenza, and this is what the history of Italian football says. So I understand that there are different ways to take an interest in a sector that I already consider absolutely independent for me, made up of important professionals, but here, we must focus together on what the real needs are, the protection of real rights of the world of football because it is absurd that there are resolutions at the European Commission level regarding the protection of copyright arising from betting on events and there is none” in Italy. “That is a sacrosanct right that belongs to the organizers of the event. Portugal” for example “faced it and recognized the entire percentage of bets on those clubs and realities to the major league”.