Aurelio de Laurentis leaves no one indifferent. Either they hate him or they love him. There is no middle ground. The controversial Napoli boss is known for being quick-tempered, and tongue-in-cheek, and at the Financial Times summit, he decided not to spare anyone.In a nutshell, he had his say about everyone: referees, agents, football as a game. He doesn’t like the way television broadcasts are made, nor how the clubs operate. He believes that football has been enslaved and that it is no longer sustainable.##EDITORS_CHOICE##The first man of Napoli is also bothered by the schedule in which matches are played. They happen every three to four days, which is crazy. He is definitely not wrong there. There isn’t a day of the week when the ball isn’t rolling on your TV screen.”Football is an industry, which was enslaved by some institutions and those institutions limited its development. Football is in debt, it is a slave and it is sick because its economy is sick. Clubs that do not have the economic capacity to compete, this means that the existing competitions do not offer enough income, despite the figures that UEFA presents. This kind of football is not sustainable, it is played too much. And when you play too much, you end up blowing the public’s interest,” said Aurelio de Laurentiis.##NAJAVA_MECA_7910290##He also attacked referees and agents.”They are the cancer of football! Referees should be dialogue with the clubs and collaborate.”De Laurentiis has a recipe for helping football.”It has to be free for everyone. If you want to regain the audience, the broadcasts must be free and televised. And, you as an entrepreneur have to be the one who knows how to get huge publicity. It is important how and how well you know football. It’s impossible for a picture of Formula 1 to almost make me think I’m in the driver’s seat, that’s not the case in football. I would like to choose what I watch, and I always say that a good example is how the World Cup final match between Argentina and France was broadcasted. Football, too, has aged as a game. You need to sit down at the table, think before that. All this is a big circus you cannot rebel against”.“The economy of football is ill,” SSC Napoli’s President, Aurelio De Laurentiis, questions the sport’s financial sustainability. #FTFootball@ADeLaurentiis | @sscnapoli | @en_sscnapoli pic.twitter.com/OYSmNQvI6a— Financial Times Live (@ftlive) February 29, 2024 He was among the first to propose the creation of a new competition, which would not be closely related to UEFA. But he doesn’t like the concept of the Super League, because he advocates that clubs enter it based on merit, not reputation.”I will be in favor of the Super League only if it is democratic, if entry is based on merit and not on pedigree. They promised to be in operation from 2025. Well, we’ll just have to wait and see.”, said Aurelio de Laurentiis and touched on the Club World Cup, and UEFA’s decision to expel Juventus from the European Cups for a year:”I feel sorry for Juventus, because UEFA punished them and kicked them out of the European Cup. If we get past Barcelona, we should be in the Club World Cup. But, I think that Napoli should still be there, because if Juventus is kicked out of the European Cups, they shouldn’t be at the Club World Cup.”
