Napoli president Aurelio De Laurentiis aimed a venomous comment at Luciano Spalletti after the coach replaced Roberto Mancini at the Italian national team.
After Mancini’s shock resignation earlier this month, Spalletti quickly emerged as the leading candidate to become the new Italy coach, fresh off the back of his historic Scudetto success in the Campania capital.
Spalletti left Napoli a year before his contract’s expiration after agreeing to a €3m termination clause with De Laurentiis, something that wasn’t paid by the FIGC.
Speaking to il Foglio via Calciomercato.com, De Laurentiis commented on Spalletti’s Azzurri appointment and the resulting fallout.
“The lawyers are discussing it and I won’t interfere. Spalletti told me: ‘I’m very tired, I need a sabbatical to cultivate the land’. So I let him go. But only he knows what was going through his head.”
De Laurentiis then discussed his love of Napoli, both the club and city.
“Napoli doesn’t numb or hurt me. It kisses me. And I adore it. The most beautiful image is when I walk away by the sea, I see it progressively further away and I have the impression that it embraces me.
“The transition from film to football was neither difficult nor traumatic but interesting, and when things are interesting, they also become easy.
“I was lucky enough to work my way up through the ranks in a family that allowed me to get to know all the components of the audiovisual industry, to become an entrepreneur and gain courage, so when I took over Napoli, I was convinced that I would quickly learn the new mechanisms.”
Spalletti has signed a three-year contract with the Italian national team and is understood to earn around €3m net per year.
His first games in charge of the Azzurri will come next month, when they’ll face North Macedonia and Ukraine in their Euro 2024 qualifiers.