Napoli President Aurelio De Laurentiis has reportedly decided against a training retreat after complaints from players, partly because there aren’t enough hotel rooms.
The Partenopei still had some slim hope of catching up with the top five for a place in the Champions League, but that evaporated following Saturday’s 1-0 loss to relegation strugglers Empoli at the Stadio Castellani.
De Laurentiis was in the stands and the Corriere della Sera claim he went down into the locker room at half-time to join in the team talk with coach Francesco Calzona.
It made little impact, because they went on to lose the match, prompting a furious response from the ultras.
They called the squad over to the away end, hurling insults at them as they stood there apologetically, just a year on from winning the club’s first Serie A title in over 30 years.
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The fans were urging De Laurentiis to put the team into a training retreat for the rest of the season, not letting them go home to their families.
It is reported that idea was floated, but was abandoned after several problems, including complaints from players and the relative absence of suitable hotel rooms in the city with a public holiday coming up.
De Laurentiis was burned by this approach before, as in 2019 there was famously a ‘mutiny’ by players who refused to go into the punitive retreat, leading then to Carlo Ancelotti’s dismissal.