Rocchi case, the hypothesis of the FIGC's receivership resurfaces

On the day after the earthquake that has swept through the Italian refereeing system, the epicentre of the earthquake risks spreading to the entire federal governance, from the top already under pressure after the resignation at the beginning of April of the president Gabriele Gravina, to the apparatus of sports justice, guilty of having underestimated, last summer, the complaint of the former assistant Domenico Rocca from which the investigation of the Milan public prosecutor Maurizio Ascione was triggered.

If, on the judicial level, the interrogations of the designator of Serie A and B referees, Gianluca Rocchi, and of the Var supervisor, Andrea Gervasoni (both self-suspended), scheduled for Thursday, 30 April, accused of concurrently participating in sporting fraud - a charge that Rocchi's lawyer, Antonio D'Avirro, described as unclear as the identities of the other people involved have not been revealed - on a political level, in fact, the commissioning of the FIGC is once again being discussed.

This hypothesis, with the start of the selection of candidates in view of the elections on 22 June, had lost share, but with the outbreak of the refereeing scandal it is circulating with renewed vigour in the palaces of Roman politics. Already the considerations of the Minister for Sport and Youth Andrea Abodi, who commented on Saturday 25 April on the first indiscretions on the Milan investigation, were very clear: "Leaving it to the judicial authorities to carry out their work and without wishing to enter into the merits of the work of the Can Rocchi designator, the most serious aspect that emerges is the way in which the same complaint was handled within the football system. So far, there has been no public acknowledgement, just as we do not know who received the complaint and which body has been entrusted with the matter'. Hoping to receive news from Coni as a matter of urgency, Abodi went on to say: 'In the event that responsibility is ascertained, there cannot but be consequences'.

A similar stance came from the League of Infrastructure Minister Matteo Salvini: 'Italia football has never been in such difficulty. While respecting the autonomy of sport and beyond the investigations of the last few hours, a commissioner of the FIGC to start from scratch with full renewal and new figures is increasingly necessary'.

Also on Sunday 26 April, called into question by Abodi, the federal prosecutor Giuseppe Chinè, in a note, specified that on 21 May 2025 he had only received the complaint signed by Rocca on the 'alleged external intervention in the Var room in Lissone by the designator Rocchi, during the Udinese-Parma match' and that he had carried out an investigation that was closed, however, without any disciplinary findings - an outcome shared by the Coni General Prosecutor for Sport in the re-examination - in July.