The Coni Board of Guarantee rejected the appeal presented by the president of the AIA, Antonio Zappi, against the 13-month ban for having exerted pressure to have the technical executives of Can C resign in order to favor the entry of Daniele Orsato as designator. No acquittal and not even a discount that would have served to avoid the forfeiture of Zappi who, instead, will have to forcibly take a step back.
The AIA therefore remains without political leadership in the most difficult moment of its recent history, also marked by the investigation by the Milan Prosecutor’s Office into the arbitration system which led to the self-suspension of the designator Gianluca Rocchi and the VAR supervisor Andrea Gervasoni. A circumstance that opens the door to the FIGC being placed under commissionership, an idea that former president Gravina had also cultivated in recent months without, however, being able to make it concrete.
Today Gravina has resigned, he only manages the ordinary administration until the elective assembly of 22 June, but has the right to intervene in extraordinary cases such as the political nullification of the top management of the arbitration association. Fiery weeks are expected and not just due to the legal matter.
Upon leaving the hearing, before knowing the verdict, Zappi had expressed himself with confidence mixed with bitterness: “In this whole affair the thing that hurt and embittered me the most was hearing a person, a man like me, described as abusing his functions and disloyal. This for me is a wound, I am even more than an arbitrator, a man of profound values and to feel accused and sentenced to 13 months, which for the AIA and for the federal system means a managerial life sentence, I believe it is also an issue of disproportionate punishment”.
He then left the door open to a further appeal outside of the sporting procedural process which concluded: “We will also evaluate the adoption of further steps because I believe that 115 years of history of the association deserve it. I believe that as president of the AIA he also has the duty to fully interpret his role in relation to technical autonomy and what he exercises. Today is the degree that will bring us definitiveness in the sporting field, if anything we will evaluate the reasons for the sentence to try to imagine and verify whether there may be further margins of appeal and possibly even reach a level of compensation”.
