Napoli President Aurelio De Laurentiis assures he wants to buy the Stadio Maradona and that the club ‘never fell, just stumbled a little bit’ during the Rudi Garcia era.
The Champions League trip to Real Madrid kicks off at the Bernabeu at 20.00 GMT.
The Partenopei can secure their place in the Round of 16 this evening with a win, or as long as they do not emerge with a worse result than SC Braga get with Union Berlin.
New coach Walter Mazzarri made his debut with a 2-1 win away to Atalanta after Garcia was sacked.
“I am very pleased, because Napoli never fell, it just stumbled a little bit,” President De Laurentiis told Amazon Prime Italia.
“That’s a long way from saying we are no longer in the running for the Scudetto, as it is only early days. We’ll see how the great leaders of football, who seem to sink it day after day, manage to make the sport more modern and less uninteresting to young people who cannot bear to continue watching old football.
“Stadiums must become like the Bernabeu, which can be used seven days a week, 24 hours a day.”
De Laurentiis is not happy with the crumbling Stadio Diego Armando Maradona, formerly the Stadio San Paolo, and launched a not so subtle dig at the local Mayor.
“If the Juventus fan Gaetano, the Mayor of Naples, will manage to escape the bond that ties him up in the local council and sells me the stadium, in a year I will make it the most beautiful stadium in Italy.
“If the counsellors hate Napoli and are not aligned with the desires of the local population, then we have the Caserta, Pompei and others.
“After all, Naples was its own country 200 years ago, all of the Campania region identifies with Naples.”
This marks the return of Mazzarri to Napoli and he is up against another former coach of this club, Carlo Ancelotti.
“We loved Napoli with Sarri, with Spalletti, but also with Ancelotti and of course Mazzarri was the first to make us jump for joy in Europe.”
I find this capitalist shark annoying. He patronises people and us proud Neapolitans with a history lesson and only cares about his profit margins and not Napoli FC. All football club owners think more about money like the corrupt authorities who do nothing to eradicate everything that is wrong with the sport