That's stating the obvious
Italy is in an odd spot for the next round of EU/eurozone appointments. It doesn't have a strong backlog of candidates nor does it have much political clout. With the ECB, Italy will go from having the President, to having no one on the Executive Board and its lone rep on the Governing Council as Bank of Italy President Ignazio Visco.
The 'good' news is that two vacancies are about to open up. Peter Praet's term ends this week but he will be replaced by Timothy Lane. The other vacancy is Benoit Coeure who leaves at year end (two months after Draghi).
I can imagine a scenario where Italy supports a French candidate for ECB leadership in exchange for a spot on the governing council.
"We must have a seat on the board -- it's impossible that an economy the size of Italy's shouldn't have one," Claudio Borghi, economic adviser to Deputy Prime Minister MatteoSalvini, told Bloomberg. "It's also important for us to have a seat because we're going to make proposals on governance."
What could complicate the battle is that Germany is currently without a representative on the ECB executive (although Austria's Sabine Lautenschläger does fine impression) and France will be without one when Coeure leaves). So if the ECB Presidency goes to neither France nor Germany, Italy's argument will be weakened.
The more interesting part of the equation could be a fresh push for ECB will buy bonds. Italy wants its newly-appointed Governing Council member to push for infrastructure QE. The central bank would buy bonds issued by the European Investment Bank to finance public works.
This would seem to be directly in violation of laws that ban the ECB from funding governments and would certainly set up a court fight.
