National team and Luciano Spalletti: Aurelio De Laurentiis’s lunge is very harsh
On the possible new Italian coach comes the sharp stance of its former president.
Roberto Mancini is no longer Italy’s coach, and there is persistent talk of Luciano Spalletti as his replacement. A prospect in front of which Aurelio De Laurentiis, former president at Napoli of the Tuscan coach, has decided to intervene, who on the afternoon of Ferragosto entrusted his thoughts to a statement published on the website of the Neapolitan club.
“After the avalanche of abstract considerations that have appeared in many media, carried out by authoritative commentators and communication operators, I believe it is necessary to provide clarity on the Spalletti affair, linked to his possible commitment as head coach of the Italian national soccer team,” De Laurentiis said in the opening of his official note.
“I have always had great respect for the national team and when I was young, apart from Napoli, it was the only team that I was passionate about,” De Laurentiis premised. “Luciano Spalletti, despite having a final year of his contract with Napoli, after winning the Scudetto expressed his desire to take a break from coaching since he was ‘very tired.’ Out of gratitude for the work he had done, I did not blink an eye even though I could have asked him to respect the contract. I therefore gave him the opportunity to take this long period of rest.”
“Consequently,” continued the statement signed by De Laurentiis, “I went in search of a coach who could replace Spalletti, who was a person of great experience and prestige. I am very happy to have identified Rudi Garcia, who will certainly do a great job. Returning to Spalletti, listening to the voice and sentiment of the millions of Napoli fans who feel a deep bond with the coach of the Italian Champion team, in granting him the possibility of not fulfilling his contract, I asked for guarantees on the respect of this sabbatical period, including a penalty in case his commitment was broken.”
Then De Laurentiis moves on to the FIGC and Gabriele Gravina: “As far as the Federation is concerned, looking at the affair under discussion, what seems most surprising to me is that it comes a few weeks before two very important competitions of the national team, suffering the resignation of coach Roberto Mancini. In this regard, there are two main considerations to be made: one does not know how to keep relations with one’s collaborators by inducing them to resign; there is a lack of suitable legal instruments to retain them by determining compliance with the contracts signed also through the provision of specific penalties. And if the choice rightly falls on Spalletti, a great coach with 25 years of experience at a high level, who has expressed the best soccer in Europe in the last season, offering him a salary of 3 million net for three years, one cannot stop at taking on (paying on behalf of the coach) a million gross per year to free him from his contractual obligation (a commitment not only to Naples but to all his millions of fans). This is inconsistent.”
“For Calcio Napoli, three million is certainly not a lot, and for Aurelio De Laurentiis it is even less,” adds the Neapolitan patron. “But the issue in the case at hand is not one of ‘vil denaro,’ but rather a matter of principle, which does not only concern Calcio Napoli, but the entire system of Italian soccer, which must shed its amateurish attitude in order to face challenges by looking at respect for the rules of business, joint-stock companies, and the market.
“But as long as the ‘rule’ is allowed to be the ‘exception,’ the soccer system cannot evolve and there will continue to be ‘Spalletti’ cases as will continue to be ‘authoritative’ commentators who do not know how a business should be run in a healthy way,” De Laurentiis concluded.
