Gaetano Micciché is the new president of Serie A

A lot of folks may have missed this one, but there’s been a pretty big bit of news in Serie A over the past week: the election of a new league president. Yesterday, representatives of all 20 clubs in the top tier met in Milan and unanimously agreed that the man for the job is Gaetano Micciché, a 67-year-old banker from Palermo.

Micciché hasn’t worked in football before, but possesses the sort of CV that impresses CEOs quite a bit. His brother Gianfranco is the president of the Assemblea regionale siciliana, which is the top legislative body in Sicily. His other brother Guglielmo, is the vice-president of the club Palermo.

The appointment of a new league president will hopefully bring some stability to Serie A, which has operated under the leadership of FIGC president Giovanni Malagò since former Italian FA president Carlo Tavecchio (who’s about as rotten as they come) resigned under pressure following the Azzurri’s shocking failure to qualify for the World Cup; Tavecchio, in turn, was operating as the chief executive of the league on a temporary basis, as the previous president of Serie A, Maurizio Beretta, stepped down nearly a year ago, and Malagò finally proposed Micciché as a candidate.

With Serie A hammering out the details of a big-time TV contract, team owners surely wanted a steady, experienced hand on the wheel throughout the final negotiations that could net the league €1.5 billion in broadcast rights per season.

The more pressing question for us, though, is what Micciché’s assent means for Fiorentina. While it’s too early to say for sure, he could represent Italian owners’ intentions to make the league more profitable, thereby improving its standing in Europe and attracting better talent. Whether or not that would help the Viola is something we’ve discussed in that piece about the TV deal linked above, so we’ll hold off on it for now.

Then again, Micciché is a confirmed AC Milan fan, so we probably shouldn’t trust him.