Napoli President Aurelio De Laurentiis blames himself for letting Luciano Spalletti leave last summer and reveals he expected Napoli to win the Champions League last season.
The Partenopei President held a lengthy press conference on Wednesday morning to explain his decisions and Napoli’s poor results this term.
Napoli won the first Scudetto in 33 years last term but currently sit seventh in the table, four points below fourth-placed Atalanta. They sacked Spalletti’s replacement, Rudi Garcia, in November 2023, bringing Walter Mazzarri back to the club.
However, De Laurentiis feels the biggest error he made was to let Spalletti leave despite activating a clause to extend the coach’s stay at the club until 2025.
“I took responsibility, but the contract with Spalletti was good. The same as Rafa Benitez’s,” ADL said as quoted by TuttoNapoli.
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“I had exercised the option which was unilateral. I had the right to activate it with a written communication and I did it. After the first season, I told Spalletti which players were working against Napoli despite being great professionals and, like Benitez, after the first season, he decided to sleep here. This means not losing time and waking up at night to think.
“We went into a training retreat in November and December 2022. January and February were extraordinary, but there was a drop from March. Kvara, last season’s big surprise, didn’t score a goal from March until November and losing a big player like him can cause problems,” continued ADL.
“After the three games against Milan, I emailed Spalletti to activate the option. Many believe it was not the right manner, but contracts and friendship are not the same thing. I would have ever expected Spalletti to say, during a dinner on May 12, that he would leave in the summer to go back to farming.
“I blame myself because Spalletti had to stay, and the option should have stayed. We would have clashed at that point, and there would have been a lawsuit, but I had to stand firm.
“Perhaps he imagined that he had given his all for the group. But I am not in his head. That’s what I want to think in good faith. I imagine he had already foreseen a meeting with the national team, but I can’t prove it.
“Spalletti said he was tired he wanted to leave but there’s a contradiction when you get the national team job. I repeat I had to confirm Spalletti and see what would have happened. That was the error that led to all the rest.”
De Laurentiis spoke to several candidates for the Napoli job before hiring Rudi Garcia.
“Thiago Motta was among the possible replacements but during a six-hour meeting in Rome, he said he aimed to coach a team outside Italy, which I can’t reveal,” claimed ADL.
“I spent three days talking to Luis Enrique but in the end, he picked PSG.”
De Laurentiis added that he thought Napoli would win the Champions League last season and that he’s planning to build a new stadium and a new training centre.
“I was disappointed by the Champions League elimination because I expected to win it,” he said.
“Inter reached the Final despite collecting 20 points less than us, so why couldn’t we be there? It was great to win the title, but the Champions League…
“If I weren’t here, we wouldn’t build a new stadium, we wouldn’t build a new training centre like the one of Manchester City. My personal money is the guarantee.
“In one and a half years, we’ll leave Castel Volturno. The work must begin. As for the stadium, I told the Mayor that we either reach an agreement within 120 days or build it elsewhere.”
I love him but some of the decisions esp on new managers is hard to explain. Why change a winning formula that you may never recover again.