A political and diplomatic knot that risks ruining Pirlo’s bench before it is even made official. The storm over the one who had been indicated as the new coach of the Italian national football team broke out immediately after the FIGC said it was ready to crown Andrea Pirlo as the new technical commissioner with the task of bringing Italian football back to the top of the world. The former footballer, however, has been the “global ambassador” of Fonbet, the main Russian bookmaker, since October 2025. The company had presented the hiring of the Italian star as a propaganda victory: proof that, despite sanctions and international isolation for the invasion of Ukraine, Moscow could still link icons of world sport to itself.
Behind Fonbet is the oligarch Sergey Lomakin, worth 1.2 billion dollars, shareholder of the bookmaker and president of United FC of Dubai, the team that Pirlo coaches. Lomakin is not sanctioned by the EU and the US, but is on Ukraine’s blacklist.
Last May, Pirlo was in Moscow with Marco Materazzi for the “Football Day” organized by Fonbet at the Luzhniki stadium. The two posed for photos, signed autographs and paraded alongside Artem Dzyuba, former Russian striker and well-known supporter of Putin.
That day Russia conducted one of its heaviest bombing raids on Kiev. The Ukrainian skeletonist Vladyslav Heraskevych, already disqualified by the IOC for the helmet dedicated to friends who died in war, had commented on X: «It is sad to see the legends of childhood transform into moral failures for whom nothing is more precious than Russian rubles. Shame».
As soon as Pirlo’s name began to circulate, politics was set in motion. Among the first to issue worried statements the president of the Senate Ignazio La Russa. «Pirlo coach?», he declared, «may God send us good luck. I respect Malagò, Leonardo and Maldini, but I wouldn’t want the mountain to have given birth to a little mouse.” And if his comment was above all about coaching skills, that of the sports manager of the Democratic Party, Mauro Berruto, however, focused on the substance of the matter: «I hope that if Pirlo is chosen as coach the first thing he will do is resolve this embarrassment by renouncing this role».
Carlo Calenda, leader of Actionfor his part, underlined that «Whoever does or has done propaganda for Russia after 2022 should not hold national office».
Pina Picierno, vice-president of the European Parliament, added: «Pirlo lent his prestige to a normalization operation of the Putin regime while Ukraine was being bombed. The national team represents Italy in the world. And Italy is on Ukraine’s side.”
What if Roberto Vannacci asks «politics not to take sides, because culture and sport are autonomous» but then declares «I am with Pirlo», the former footballer considers the controversy to be instrumental, speaking of hypocrisy given that the World Cup was played in the USA, a country at war with Iran. At the moment the president of CONI Giovanni Malagò is silent, Pirlo’s lawyers let it be known that the contract with Fonbet can be terminated immediately without penalties, but the codacons reminds everyone that the regulations prevent the national team bench from going to anyone who is under contract with a betting company. Codacons has already announced a complaint to Agcom and an appeal to the TAR.
