Rome [Italy], April 3: The president of Italy's football federation FIGC Gabriele Gravina and national team delegation chief Gianluigi Buffon have resigned from their posts in the wake of a third straight failure to qualify for the World Cup.
A FIGC statement on Thursday said that Gravina announced his decision at a top level meeting and called for the election of a new president on June 22. He had held the job since 2018.
Later, Buffon announced his decision in a post on Instagram."Now that President Gravina has resigned, I feel free to do what I believe is the responsible thing," he wrote.
Buffon, the goalkeeper in the winning World Cup team from 2006, had been asked to reconsider his spontaneous decision to resign immediately after the team's 4-1 defeat on penalties in a play-off at Bosnia-Herzegovina on Tuesday.
"Representing the national team is an honour and a passion that has been with me since my childhood," Buffon wrote.
"I carry all this in my heart and am grateful for the privilege and the lessons that this intense experience - despite its painful aftermath - has taught me." Italy's defeat in Bosnia-Herzegovina will see them miss the June 11-July 19 World Cup in the United States, Mexico and Canada.
Four-time winners Italy last played at the global event in 2014, going out in the group stage. They failed to qualify in 2018 and 2022.
According to a statement, the succession at the helm of the association is to be settled on June 22 - that is, during the World Cup.
It remains to be seen whether coach Gennaro Gattuso will be able to stay on. The 2006 World Cup winner was backed by Gravina to continue after the match in Zenica.
Gravina was called to resign by the media and also by sports minister Andrea Abodi who urged a complete overhaul of football structures in the country, starting with the FIGC leadership.
The FIGC statement said that Gravina was willing to appear next week before a parliamentary committee to "report on the state of Italian football." Also on Thursday, UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin told La Gazzetta dello Sport that Italy must speed up Euro 2032 infrastructure efforts and threatened to strip the country of co-hosting the event with Turkey if worse comes to worst.
The poor state of football infrastructure has been named as one of the reasons for the decline in Italian football, and Ceferin warned the government that this must change for the Euros, having already last year named the infrastructure in the country "a disgrace." "Perhaps Italian politicians should be asking themselves why Italy has one of the worst football infrastructures in Europe," he told Gazzetta as he backed his first UEFA vice-president Gravina.
"Euro 2032 is scheduled and will take place: I hope the infrastructure will be ready. Otherwise, the tournament will not be played in Italy." But Ceferin also said that he has not given up hope that Italy will return to its past greatness in the sport.
"Italy is one of the greatest footballing nations and will return to the top," he said.
"The biggest problem in Italian football is the relationship between football politics and 'normal' politics. If everyone fell into line, you would soon become European and world champions again."
Source: Qatar Tribune
