Napoli President Aurelio De Laurentiis believes Juve’s Club World Cup place should be allocated to the Partenopei. De Laurentiis was among the speakers at a Summit organized by the Financial Times on the topic of business related to the football world and sports, and took the time to address various issues:
De Laurentiis on Osimhen: “Osimhen is a great player, but that’s well known. He is one of the great players Napoli has had. We’ve had many legends like Edinson Cavani, Higuain, Lavezzi, Mertens. Osimhen is an excellent player. There are many players who have fallen in love with Napoli. Naples is a fantastic place; some players have fallen in love with it and stayed, like Hamsik for 11 years or others for eight years. And there are others who are in the sights of Real Madrid, PSG, Arsenal, Manchester City, Chelsea. These teams have a lot of money; it’s difficult to keep players when these teams want them, especially when your players have a buyout clause. Osimhen’s buyout clause? Yes, he has a buyout clause: it’s a very high figure.”
“Can Osimhen stay? Who knows who will leave, we’ll see. Money is the last problem for Napoli. We’ve always made excellent purchases, as we have in the past. We’ll do it in the future too. It’s just sentimental problems. When you see a player leave, it’s like saying goodbye to a child. You’re happy even if this child has fantastic success wherever he goes.”
“Football is an industry enslaved by some institutions that, having to put on the garment of command, have limited its development. Football thus finds itself increasingly indebted and enslaved by piracy that it has never been able to control. It is sick primarily because its economy is sick because clubs that do not have the economic capacity to compete enroll in leagues: it means that existing competitions do not offer sufficient revenues, despite the figures UEFA reels out for its new cups. Football is thus unsustainable and played too much. And when you play too much, you end up inflating the public’s interest.
“Football on TV must be free for everyone. If you want to recover an audience, you have to broadcast it live on free TV. And you as an entrepreneur must be the one who knows how to gather enormous advertising. And it also matters how you show football. Not only in stadiums, which in Italy are dilapidated and not comfortable for the public. I’m also talking about TV: it’s not possible that in Formula 1 the images almost make me believe I’m in the driver’s seat and in football it’s not like that. I would like to choose my shots, and I always say that the example of how to broadcast a match is the World Cup final between Argentina and France. But football has also aged as a game: we should sit at a table and reflect, but ours is a great circus where you can’t stop to think and therefore you can’t rebel.”
“Agents? They are a cancer of football. Referee’s? The refereeing class should depend on the clubs, with whom they should dialogue so that they are not a caste but collaborators. And it is not possible for a referee to expel a coach. Football seems like a joke because of this.”
“Super League? Ten years ago, I proposed a sort of European club championship complementary or different from the Champions League, with teams participating based on results in their own leagues. I will be in favor of the Super League only if it is capable of being democratic, only if you enter it on merit and not by pedigree. They promised to be operational from 2025. Time will tell.”
“Will Napoli go to the Club World Cup? I’m sorry for Juve, which was punished by UEFA and excluded from the cups: if we were to beat Barcelona and then get a win or a draw, we should go there by right. But I think Napoli should go anyway because if Juve is out of European competitions, it shouldn’t be admitted to the Club World Cup.”
