Aurelio De Laurentiis has waited for years, and now he has his five minutes of fame. He tried with many players, he tried with great coaches (Carlo Ancelotti, Rafa Benitez) but finally won the Serie A title with Luciano Spalletti and Victor Osimhen. So, everybody is looking for an interview and La Repubblica got one and when finally given a chance, Napoli boss said some…interesting things. He spoke of a totally different competition calendar, again mentioned African players and AFCON, talked about stadiums being used for weddings and first communions and suggested new methods for attracting young people to football.The Napoli story in context:2001/02: Relegation to Serie B2004/05: Bankruptcy, re-founded by De Laurentiis under the name Napoli Soccer2005/06: Promotion to Serie B, name restored2007/08: Promotion to Serie A2011/2013/2019: Win the Coppa Italia2014/15: Win the SuperCoppa… pic.twitter.com/CKSGWLaQ0H— Italian Football News 🇮🇹 (@footitalia1) May 5, 2023 De Laurentiis is not very fond of the elements. Rain, snow, wind…it’s all a distraction to him, so his idea is to play the European leagues and Cup’s only between April and October. With this idea, he would also be free to let his African players go to AFCON. Remember, it was Napoli owner who suggested that contracts with African players should have clauses that would legally prevent them from flying back to their countries for international matches and tournaments. Now he finally seems to have found the solution.“I have an idea. Why play in winter with snow, rain, hail? Couldn’t we start all over Europe on April 1? It’s not an April fool’s joke, but a necessity. In seven months until October, national leagues and European cups could be played. From November to March there are five months left for the players to rest, go on retreat, play with the national teams. If I have African players, why should I deprive myself of them for the African Cup in January? UEFA and FIFA are absent out of egotism and selfishness. For them there are only votes to be reconfirmed, but they do not pose these problems. At the Champions League final in Paris a year ago there were people who risked death, screaming children, frightened mothers, this is not doing football any favours, on the contrary it is mortifying it. UEFA and FIFA operate in a dominant position and nobody tells them anything. They should sit down at the table with us and be respectful of our leagues, which for the fans come before the European and national cups. I have players coming and going from South America or Asia in 48 hours and then they have to play for us the next day: madness. Now the tournaments start in August, some even in July. And the weather is shifting, we evaluate that too” said De Laurentiis.CAF demands an investigation in the wake of Napoli president’s unacceptable anti-African commentsLet’s move on quickly to the next idea: spending all day at the stadiums, watch football, get married, and get the first communion there…“We have a big problem with the stadiums. With a few rare exceptions, they are obsolete, the match can hardly be seen, there is an athletics track, like in Napoli or Rome. And then, do we want to bring families there? Do we want to make it possible for people to stay at the stadium all day to have fun, to eat? I would celebrate weddings and first communions at the stadium. Perhaps the Church would be disturbed, but it would be enough to erect a blessed altar, we did it in the retreat at Dimaro, how many times did Cardinal Sepe come to officiate mass and no one was ever shocked? The football pitch is underestimated and underused, it could bring benefits in terms of turnover. And then we have the virtual stadium, we must succeed in winning back the young” suggested Napoli boss.‘I will not sell Victor Osimhen this summer – no way!’De Laurentiis also talked about the team and players he assembled and won Serie A title with, but also revealed he would like to buy an American and a Japanese player.“Things happened with Ancelotti and Gattuso that didn’t convince me, so I finally got rid of all those players that I found a bit unmotivated and couldn’t take me where I wanted to go. I needed new air. And we had already spotted Kvaratskhelia in Georgia for three years, but it was the COVID period, we had lost 258 million euros, they were asking a lot of money from us. Then he changed agents and Giuntoli was very good at bringing him home for 11 million . Osimhen had a chance to recover physically, many times we had him at half service. Not only the jewels, but also all the others. Captain Di Lorenzo is an extraordinary man, very polite, who can always be counted on. I’m sure I can keep them all and I would like to add others. I would like to have an American, because in America even if the league is worth little there are great players who shine in the national team. And then a Japanese, as we already have a Korean, because there is a big development of our football in the East and there are new entries to consider. But I wouldn’t want to send any of our people away” said the Italian.‘From the streets of Nigeria to the world’s history books’Finally, he has an idea how to interest young people in football, rather than video games: how about Carlo Ancelotti and Luciano Spalletti teaching them in school?“The video game industry are super millionaires, there are fantastic products that kids play either alone, which is even more negative, or connected in groups. All this distracts them from football. Then we need to get them back on the right track for a moment. I would ask the Minister of Education to imagine a couple of one-hour lessons a month, where the Spalletti or Ancelotti starts to tell the students, from primary to high school, what a game is, what a formation means, what the players’ roles are. It would be enough to take the last World Cup final, Argentina-France, and vivisect it to tell them what a 4-4-2 or a 4-3-3 is, what the difference is between a central striker or a second striker, between a three and a four-man defence. This would bring the very young closer to football, they would all eventually become super-experts and could pretend to be the coaches or commentators, amused and entertaining, of any virtual broadcast of a match” said De Laurentiis.##NAJAVA_MECA_7252282##
