Malagò's election is a case: what is Pantouflage and why Abodi asked Coni and Anac for checks

A French word at the heart of one of the most intricate cases in Italian sports governance. It is the 'Pantouflage', i.e. the passage of a public manager to positions in the private sector, taking with him the relationships built up in the previous institutional role. And it is this rule, introduced by the so-called Testo Unico del Pubblico (Single Text on Public Employment), that has turned Giovanni Malagò's candidature for the presidency of the FIGC into a legal and political case.

The knot is temporal. Malagò left the presidency of CONI on 26 June 2025. He filed his candidature for the leadership of the Federcalcio on 13 May 2026, with elections set for 22 June. Twelve months away. The 'Pantouflage' rule in Article 53, Paragraph 16-ter of Legislative Decree 165/2001 requires thirty-six.

It reads: 'Employees who, in the last three years of service, have exercised authoritative or negotiating powers on behalf of the public administrations referred to in Article 1, paragraph 2, may not perform, in the three years following the termination of their public employment relationship, any work or professional activity with private entities to which the activity of the public administration was carried out through the same powers. Contracts concluded and appointments conferred in breach of the provisions of this paragraph shall be null and void and the private entities that concluded or conferred them shall be prohibited from contracting with the public administrations for the following three years, with the obligation to return any remuneration received and ascertained to have been paid in respect thereof".

The point, then, is within the above sentence: Coni falls within those public administrations of Article 1(2) of the Consolidated Law on Civil Servants. The latter part, in particular, states: 'By public administrations is meant all the administrations of the State'. But the decisive part comes at the end: 'Until the organic revision of the discipline of the sector, the provisions of the present decree continue to apply to Coni'.

We come to the present, when there are about two weeks to go until the vote (22 June) to elect the new FIGC president. On 20 May, Leghist senator Roberto Marti filed a parliamentary question to Sports Minister Abodi, asking for a preventive clarification with the competent authorities.