Napoli’s season is being played on the pitch, but Aurelio De Laurentiis has also set out the terms on which the club’s future will be protected. The president insists that Napoli is not for sale, framing recent contact with Matt Rizzetta and investment funds not as the beginning of a takeover but as a test of what outside ownership would mean for a club he has led for 22 years.
The coach and the club
De Laurentiis said an approach arrived around a year ago, when Rizzetta requested a meeting and introduced him to two funds he represented. Their interest was in purchasing Napoli, and the club allowed legal teams from both sides to begin discussing the framework of a possible valuation.
Before placing a definitive price on the club, De Laurentiis said, a full due-diligence process would have been necessary. Napoli made the wider De Laurentiis group available for that purpose, but he said the investigation never properly began. Even a company regarded as sound, he argued, needs to be checked for possible hidden liabilities, including tax matters that may not yet have emerged.
The proposed figure was €2.26 billion, but the structure of the offer caused concern. De Laurentiis said the buyers intended to pay part at signing and the remainder over three years. More importantly, he questioned whether he would retain any real authority after a sale. What had initially been presented as continued involvement would, in his account, have eventually reduced him to an honorary president.
For De Laurentiis, the issue was not simply the valuation. He asked what assurance he could have that two decades of work would not be undone, stressing his responsibility to Naples and to the club’s support around the world. Napoli, he said, has developed its identity and taken commercial steps that other clubs have not matched.
He has previously turned down an offer of €3.5 billion from Arab investors, explaining that he had to decide whether retirement or continued involvement in football mattered more to him. Having learned how to run a football club, he said he still enjoys the work, even if he believes the game itself has become outdated and requires reform.
A future beyond a sale
Rizzetta has been welcomed as a guest at Napoli matches, while the two men also met at a hotel after De Laurentiis was invited to attend a basketball game. When the question of a sale returned, however, the Napoli president said he preferred not to reopen what he described as a continuing saga, while maintaining cordial relations.
He ruled out a shared ownership arrangement as an easy solution. De Laurentiis described Rizzetta as a man of action, but said he is not accustomed to sharing major decisions beyond his own trusted staff. Football, he added, cannot be managed like a film with a predetermined ending.
To make the point, he referred to Roma’s comeback under José Mourinho and their 4-3 victory over Real Madrid, a match whose outcome seemed unlikely for much of the contest. The uncertainty of the sport, in his view, makes clarity of command essential at a club.
If Napoli were ever sold, De Laurentiis said he would rather hand it to a Neapolitan than an American owner. A local successor, he argued, would understand the city, its people and the daily relationships required to lead the club. If someone from Naples wanted to take his place for a period, he said he could step away knowing he had worked for a people he had come to love.
The stadium question
The project De Laurentiis most clearly identifies with Napoli’s next chapter is a new stadium. He said he wants to build it himself, taking on the physical and organisational burden of construction to create an asset that does not currently exist.
He suggested that Rizzetta might have been prepared to remain at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona. De Laurentiis instead envisages the site becoming green space once a new ground has been built, noting that the present area carries seismic risk.
A wider argument about football
De Laurentiis believes the discussion goes beyond Napoli’s ownership. He pointed to losses of more than £700 million in English football as evidence that even the most celebrated leagues face structural problems. In his view, the sport needs to pause and reconsider its model, taking inspiration from the way American professional leagues such as the NBA have addressed their own organisation.
Rather than continuing disputes involving sporting institutions, UEFA, FIFA and their leading figures, he called for a collective effort to renew a game that children still love. If football does not change, he warned, it risks losing younger generations and therefore its future audience.
Patience around the team
De Laurentiis also called for calm after the Champions League win over Bodo/Glimt. He said the immediate task was to continue working and recover injured players, while expressing complete faith in Massimiliano Allegri’s experience.
His message was that setbacks should not provoke reckless reactions. Teams win, draw and lose, he said; defeat should lead to an analysis of errors and the changes required, rather than the abandonment of an entire project.
