The presentation of the new Napoli jersey was all about making the club more ‘international’, but President Aurelio De Laurentiis proved how provincial his mindset is by sniping at Juventus director Cristiano Giuntoli.
Winning the Scudetto for the first time in 33 years was a huge achievement and one that the fans are rightfully going to enjoy for a long time to come. They also impressed in the Champions League last season and should do well this time around too, especially if Victor Osimhen and Kvicha Kvaratskhelia continue that kind of form.
However, it was amid all the speeches about making Napoli a global icon that De Laurentiis showed how petty and provincial his mindset still is. The reaction of supporters to Giuntoli admitting he had been a Juventus fan since childhood was typically over the top, but to hear the same words come out of the mouth of the club owner really is going too far.
“I was shocked, I had no idea. If I had realised that earlier, I would’ve got rid of him sooner,” said De Laurentiis of Giuntoli’s confession. “I have to wonder, why on earth did he even come to Napoli then?”
It’s as if he has never considered the concept of someone working in a profession and not being tied to a club for life. Giuntoli is hardly the first, he follows in the admittedly less than hallowed footsteps of Luciano Moggi, who was the director of sport at Napoli when they won the Scudetto in 1990 and moved on to Juventus, where he was at the core of the Calciopoli scandal.
People have got to let go of this childish belief that someone is ‘betraying’ a club by joining another in the same league. It was bad enough with players, who have precious little choice much of the time on who they are bought from a sold to, but when directors who have been there for just eight years can be considered ‘traitors’ it really does become pathetic.
Paolo Maldini spent his entire career with Milan and his family DNA is embedded in the threads of the Rossoneri jersey, but Giuntoli isn’t even from Naples. He’s from Florence, so if anything it’s Fiorentina fans who should be annoyed that he grew up supporting their rivals Juve.
Lazio fans were worried Sergej Milinkovic-Savic would be playing against them for Juventus, Inter, Milan or Napoli, but in their shoes, I would be more irritated that he preferred to go to Saudi Arabia rather than risk staying even once they qualified for the Champions League. Claudio Lotito said the Serbian “begged” to be released for Al-Hilal, the only genuine offer that came in for him.
There is a man desperate to get out of the Stadio Olimpico, just as they were starting to get somewhere. At least with one of the other Italian sides, he’d have shown some sense of career ambition. This just feels like Nicolo Zaniolo going to Galatasaray just so he could get away from Roma.
The word ‘traitor’ really does get bandied about in football now, especially in online discourse. A few even called Carlo Ancelotti a traitor for choosing to take the Brazil job. It’s not as if he was ever offered the role for Italy, let alone turned it down because he had a preference for the Selecao. It wasn’t a choice between two proposals. Fabio Capello was manager of England, nobody seemed to mind that. Other than the England fans and players, of course.
Italian football keeps talking the talk that they want to be more global, international and have a broader reach, but they’ve got to let go of this provincial mentality first.
Twitter: @SusyCampanale