Another Feat by Our “Hero”

Ladies and gentlemen, our hero has done it. He has managed to add yet another negative record to his already disastrous management, pushing Italian football even further toward a seemingly bottomless pit.

For those who may not have understood who we are talking about, we are of course referring to the man who, despite failures, mismanagement, and scandals, has occupied the highest seat of the FIGC for eight years now: Gabriele Gravina from Castellaneta. And this time, the “feat” goes beyond anything one could have imagined.

And no, I’m not referring to the third consecutive World Cup missed by the Italian national team (we’ll have to wait a few more months for that), nor to yet another humiliation inflicted by football movements once considered two or three levels below ours—but to something even more unthinkable.

_{At the center, the current head coach of the Italian national team, Gennaro Gattuso. Ronnie Macdonald, CC BY 2.0, from Wikimedia Commons}

In 2025, Gravina and his entourage managed to push football behind tennis, effectively relegating it—for the first time in history—to the role of Italy’s second national sport. The Italian Tennis Federation has in fact overtaken the FIGC in revenue, reaching 230 million euros (compared to football’s not-even-200 million), while aiming for further growth in 2026.

But that’s not all, because the gap in the number of participants between the two sports is shrinking more and more. Just a few years ago, football could boast nearly twice as many enthusiasts as racket sports, but today the numbers are practically identical.

In plain terms, fewer and fewer school-age kids are choosing football, preferring other sports disciplines—tennis foremost among them. A significant factor is the lack of credibility of the Italian football system, now reflected not only in obvious facts but also in increasingly disastrous figures and financial statements, as well as environments frequented mostly by people lacking sporting culture and by “nervous” parents.

_{Image created with Microsoft Copilot}

Of course, the explosion of tennis has also been fueled by the recent successes of superstars such as Jannik Sinner, Jasmine Paolini, and Lorenzo Musetti, as well as the excellent progress of rising stars like Matteo Arnaldi and Flavio Cobolli.

The third consecutive Davis Cup, brought home last November, confirmed Italy as the queen of world tennis and once again highlighted how the country is still capable of excellence when the right people are placed at the helm of organizations, sports-related or otherwise.

The president of the Italian Tennis Federation, Angelo Binaghi, has managed to build something that would have seemed unthinkable just a decade ago. Under his leadership, tennis clubs and schools have been expanded, major international events such as the ATP Finals and the Davis Cup have been brought to Italy, and promising new generations of athletes have been strongly supported.

_{Jasmine Paolini, Peter Menzel, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons}

A careful and forward-looking management, designed solely to pursue the growth of Italian tennis—a movement to which Binaghi, as a former player, has devoted almost his entire life.

In short, no friends to be saved with missile shields at any cost, from every possible trouble, nor enemies to be taken down on commission. On one side, love, genuine passion for the sport, and efforts entirely focused on the common cause; on the other, personal interests placed as the sole objective.

Tennis shows that Italian sport is by no means reduced to a joke, as those in football would have us believe. It would be enough to change people, vision, and perspective to return to excellence even where, for over a century, we were masters—but first and foremost, it would be necessary to sweep away the unpunished corruption that is devouring the world of football.

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