Demetrio Albertini is still serious and elegant, just as he was when he played. He has the focused gaze and proud bearing of someone who knows exactly what he wants, and a long career in football administration behind him. He has held several positions within the Italian Football Federation: Vice Commissioner during the 2006 World Cup, Vice President and, eventually, President of the Technical Sector. From 1994 to 2014, he served as a councillor of the Italian Footballers’ Association (AIC), later taking on a key role in organising the AIC Gran Galà del Calcio and helping shape the format as we know it today. But before all that came his career as a player. He won league titles and the Champions League, lived through the great Milan era and shared the pitch with some of the finest players of his generation: Rijkaard, Baggio, Gullit, Van Basten. It was Van Basten who left him with the memory that has stayed with him most. On the day of Albertini’s farewell match, looking at the parade of legends who had come together for the occasion, he simply told him: “Only you could have brought us all together.” Probably the finest compliment Albertini could have received. In football, there is no recognition quite like that of your peers.
The AIC Gran Galà del Calcio is unique: the protagonists are the ones rewarding other protagonists. What does it mean to be judged directly by those who play the game?
The real value is that the people voting are professionals who know the game from the inside. They are not judging just talent or spectacle, but also charisma, behaviour and what a player actually brings to the 90 minutes. Traditional awards tend to favour the player who produces the moment everyone remembers. Players see things that are harder to spot from the outside, but no less important. On the pitch, they are the most honest and demanding judges, of themselves and of one another. They know exactly who gives them the most trouble. It might not be the player trying the dribble, but the midfielder who has found the right position. Or the one who has read the move a fraction earlier. Football comes down to time, to fractions of a second; at the end of a game, you know exactly which opponent has taken that time away from you. You know who was really the best.
The 2026 edition marked a turning point: the event moved from December to early September. Can we see it as the official opening of the new season?
The AIC Gran Galà del Calcio has become, in every sense, a celebration of Italian football. It is football rewarding itself. This year, together with Lega Calcio Serie A, we decided to bring the event forward for a simple reason: we did not want too much time to pass between the performances being recognised and the ceremony itself. By December, the new season was already under way and inevitably began to colour the way people looked back at the previous one. A player might have been exceptional the year before, but a change of club or a difficult start to the new season could quickly shift the focus elsewhere. Holding the event in early September means we can recognise what was achieved in the previous season while it is still fresh, and then open the new one. It has been, and will continue to be, a prestigious showcase and, particularly after a bitter summer without Italy at the World Cup, it also felt like the right moment to start again and give Italian football fresh impetus.
Speaking of the game: this was the first edition in which Lega Calcio Serie A officially joined the AIC in organising the evening.
Yes, and that is good news. We are at a point where the Italian football system is being rethought, while the wider political and institutional landscape is changing too. For a long time, the relationship between these two institutions was viewed through the old logic of “the union versus Confindustria”. That way of seeing things no longer holds, because these are two essential parts of the same game. That is why it matters that the institution representing the league and the one representing the players work closely together. Finding common ground around a project such as the AIC Gran Galà del Calcio shows that Lega Calcio Serie A can bring its institutional weight to an initiative that began within the AIC and help it grow. That kind of cooperation matters. When two institutions of this importance work together, there is a chance not only to talk about the reforms Italian football so desperately needs, but to make them happen. That is the crucial step: moving beyond talking about change and actually putting it into practice. Hopefully, this evening will be a good place to start.