"Otherwise, the tournament will not be played in Italy." UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin didn't bury the threat. Italy must submit a list of five viable host stadiums to UEFA by October — and right now, it's not clear they have them.
Ceferin made his position plain in an interview with Gazzetta dello Sport, repeating long-standing criticisms of Italy's crumbling football infrastructure. The co-hosting deal with Turkey for Euro 2032 isn't in question. Italy's place in it very much is.
The numbers are damning
Between 2007 and 2024, Italy built or redeveloped just six stadiums. Germany managed 19. England 13. France 12. Those aren't abstract figures — they reflect decades of political inertia and clubs stuck in a loop of planning disputes with local authorities who own the grounds.
AC Milan, Inter Milan, Lazio and Roma have all been fighting their own stadium battles for years with little to show for it. The San Siro saga alone has dragged on long enough to become a punchline. These aren't small clubs failing to get things done — these are four of the biggest names in Italian football, and they can't get a spade in the ground.
Ceferin was direct about where the blame sits: not with the clubs, not with the recently resigned FIGC president Gabriele Gravina, but with Italian politicians. "Perhaps it is Italian politicians who should be asking themselves why Italy has some of the worst football infrastructure in Europe," he said. That's a pointed statement from the man who controls whether the tournament happens there at all.
Gravina gone, stadium crisis stays
Gravina stepped down on Thursday after an extraordinary FIGC meeting, pressure mounting after Italy's penalty shootout loss to Bosnia ended their World Cup qualifying campaign — a third consecutive failure to reach the tournament. Ceferin defended him, calling it "absolutely not Gabriele's responsibility."
But Gravina's exit doesn't fix a single stadium. Whoever takes over as FIGC president inherits the same October deadline and the same list of venues that don't meet modern tournament standards. From a betting perspective, any Euro 2032 markets involving Italy as host carry more uncertainty than they should at this stage — the hosting picture could look very different by the end of the year.
Italy will co-host Euro 2032. Unless they won't. Ceferin has made clear it's their choice to make — and the clock is running.
