Fonbet Comes Out Swinging Over Pirlo: 'Lies and Misinformation'

_{The Russian betting operator, whose sponsorship deal cost Pirlo his national team job, broke its silence with an official statement provided to Casinos.com. (Image: courtesy of Fobet).}

Fonbet has broken its silence. Days after the row over its deal with Andrea Pirlo ended his candidacy to coach Italy, the Russian bookmaker has issued a statement, provided exclusively to Casinos.com, that defends the former midfielder and accuses Western media of inventing a political scandal.

The company's response runs on two tracks: an unreserved defense of its ambassador and a frontal attack on the international press. The tone pulls the case back into the spotlight just as the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) thought it had turned the page.

The affair matters well beyond one appointment. In the space of a week, a contract with an operator that holds no license in Italy sank the leading candidate for the national team bench, triggered resignations at the top of the FIGC, drew in Russian diplomacy, and pushed regulators to block the bookmaker's websites. It is a live demonstration of how quickly a sponsorship can turn toxic.

A defense of the man and an attack on the press

Asked about Pirlo's failed appointment, Fonbet's press office released a statement in three parts. "It is with great regret that we observe the controversy surrounding Andrea's career, which calls into question the integrity and career of a man who has dedicated his entire life to football and his love for his country."

The second passage turns its fire on the media. 

"Naturally, we continue to closely monitor reports from foreign press and are concerned by the amount of lies and misinformation being spread by Western media in an attempt to smear one of the greatest athletes in the history of football," the company said.

A political reading, and a partnership intact

"Once again, we have all witnessed how politics is being used in sport to achieve selfish ends," Fonbet said in the statement. 

"We wish Andrea a swift resolution to the situation and believe that a fair and impartial assessment of all the facts and circumstances will allow him to defend his reputation." BQ

The relationship itself has not been cut. Pirlo's image remains visible on Fonbet's channels, and hours after his withdrawal the caption on his promotional video for the brand was changed to read "Ciao, Andrea Pirlo", complete with a waving hand and a wink.

How the appointment collapsed

Pirlo, 47, was the leading candidate to take Italy back to a World Cup in 2030 after three consecutive failed qualifying campaigns. The push came above all from Paolo Maldini, appointed technical director on 11 July by Giovanni Malago, the new FIGC president, with Leonardo alongside as advisor. Pirlo's signature was expected in Rome on Monday 27 July.

It never happened. Pirlo became a Fonbet global ambassador in October 2025, during his current spell in charge of United FC, a second-division club in Dubai whose owner, Russian billionaire Sergey Lomakin, has been identified in Italian reporting as a Fonbet shareholder. 

The tie-up surfaced in the Italian press on Friday 24 July, and the nomination stalled over the weekend as lawmakers from several parties objected to his links with the Russian operator.

On the Monday morning, Pirlo confirmed in an Instagram post that he had learned the previous evening he was no longer the candidate. 

On the contract, he offered the line that became the counterpoint to the entire affair: "Attributing political significance to this means attributing to me beliefs I have never expressed."

Resignations, then a letter from Moscow

The collapse set off a chain reaction. Maldini and Leonardo resigned on 27 July, just 16 days after taking office, and delivered the news to Malago in person.

Andrea Abodi, Italy's minister for sport and youth, called Pirlo's withdrawal "a piece of news that speaks for itself" and lamented a lack of timeliness and unity of purpose in how the federation handled it.

Diplomacy then entered the picture. Alexey Paramonov, the Russian ambassador to Italy, expressed "sincere and human solidarity" with Pirlo in an open letter posted on the embassy's Telegram channel, accusing what he called a pseudo-democratic Italian establishment of ostracism. The intervention placed the case squarely in the geopolitical frame Pirlo had just rejected.

The federation turns the page with Mancini and Ranieri

Malago rebuilt quickly. At the Federal Council on 28 July he appointed Roberto Mancini as head coach, returning the Euro 2020 winner to the bench three years after his resignation, and named Claudio Ranieri, 74, as technical director and president of Club Italia. A third figure to coordinate the national teams is expected by the end of the week.

At his presentation on Wednesday, Mancini opened with a mea culpa for his 2023 exit. He said there had been a lack of communication with then-president Gabriele Gravina, and that a conversation between them would have changed everything. 

Then came his declaration of love for the shirt: "The national team jersey is a bit like the woman of your life; if you lose her, you've done something wrong."

On Pirlo, Malago said the final call was his. He took responsibility for halting the appointment, said neither he nor Maldini had known about the Fonbet contract, and described the separation from Maldini and Leonardo as consensual and free of controversy.

Why the betting industry should take note

At the center of it all, as often happens when sport meets betting, sits the sponsor. Fonbet is no ordinary operator: founded in Moscow in 1994, it is Russia's leading bookmaker, a sponsor of the country's national football team, and it holds no license in Italy.

On 27 July, at the height of the storm, Italy's Customs and Monopolies Agency (ADM) added Fonbet.com, Fonbet.info, and Fonbetpoker.com to its blacklist of unauthorized gambling sites, part of an update that blocked 293 domains and took the register past 12,400. Until then, the sites had been freely accessible from Italy. 

The consumer group Codacons has since asked the communications regulator AGCOM to sanction Pirlo under the Dignity Decree, the 2018 law that bans gambling advertising and sponsorship in Italian sport.

This is where the case becomes one for insiders. Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, any commercial tie to a Russian brand has carried political weight in Italy, and European clubs that once worked with Fonbet, including AC Milan, cut those links that year. A national team coach is not just any employee. He is the face of the country's football, and that turned a commercial contract into an affair of state. 

The result is a paradox the industry will recognize: operators have spent years in search of legal routes into football, and here a deal with the wrong one was enough to unseat a world champion before he was even appointed.

What remains of the case

The national team found its coach in record time, but the week leaves marks: a federal reorganization that crumbled after 16 days, a candidacy burned in about 48 hours, and Moscow's diplomacy stirring the pot.

Above all, it confirms how thin the line runs in Italy between sport, politics, and gambling. Mancini starts from here, with a 2030 World Cup to chase and the knowledge that, on the Azzurri bench, the signatures on a contract can count as much as the results.

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