Farewell to Tavecchio, president between gaffes and reforms

Mourning in the world of football. At the age of 79 he died today in the Erba hospitaldue to pneumonia Charles Tavecchio, president of the FIGC from August 2014 to November 2017. Lived thirty-nine months as president between gaffes and reforms for Tavecchio, born in 1943 in Ponte Lambro (Como), a town of which he was mayor for almost twenty years, where he lived and where the funeral will take place on Monday at 3pm. Politics was a great passion of him, but it is in football that he achieved his notoriety.

A career lived dangerously between racist gaffes, reforms, a good European and a historic failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, which cost him his resignation, that of the former number one of the Amateurs, a League he led continuously for 15 years from 1999 to 2014before landing at the helm of football that matters.

Racist slurs and gaffes

That Tavecchio’s era in the FIGC was born in the name of controversy was immediately evident, with the empty passage of the former president of the Amateur League, shortly before taking Abete’s place at the Football Federation. That racist «Opti Poba» who ate bananas slipped into a speech against the growing number of foreign footballers forced him to make a public apology. Tavecchio nevertheless became president of the Football Association (despite an audio where he insulted homosexuals “I have nothing against gays but keep them away from me, I’m normal” and Jewsthat “Jew” referring to the Roman entrepreneur Anticoli) and began the work of the post-World Cup with an unexpected blow: the engagement of Antonio Conte at the helm of the national team. Innovative contract, with image rights included, intervention by the sponsor.

Football Italy restarted and qualified early for the European Championships. Continental tournament in which Italy from work in progress managed to eliminate Spain and finish the race in the quarterfinals, but on penalties in front of the great Germany.

The reforms

Tavecchio’s FIGC came out of the European Championship strengthened and worked on the regulatory changes: he launched the roof of roses with precise indications on the number of Italians and those coming from the nursery. It was the first step of the reforms, which he continued with the rules on financial fair play And the launch of the federal centers; but at the center crimaned the mother of all reforms, thereto reduce Serie A to 18 teams, launched but immediately stranded in the shallows of the League.

But trouble was always around the corner: Felice BelloliTavecchio’s successor at the helm of the Amateurs, defined in the minutes of a board meeting “4 lesbians” the soccer players. New storm and Tavecchio, still under pressure, came out forcing Belloli to leave.

Re-elected on March 6, after beating the challenger Andrea Abodi, Tavecchio hoped he had put the worst troubles behind him. Those of the Leagues remained: commissioner of that of Serie A, he tried to overcome even the last obstacles.

Without the World Cup, goodbye Figc

But the worst was yet to come: to avert it, he had defined the possibility that Italy did not go to the World Cup as an apocalypse. The nightmare instead became reality, through the tears of the accountant from Ponte Lambro who became king of Italian football.