Napoli CEO Aurelio de Laurentiis proposes Serie A restructure and reveals Florentino Perez talks

Napoli CEO Aurelio de Laurentiis has proposed an idea regarding the restructure of the Serie A and has revealed some details of his talks with Florentino Perez.

It was reported yesterday that Napoli and De Laurentiis welcome the reintroduction of the Super League plan and the club’s CEO would be open to speaking to other clubs involved and hold talks regarding making it better. And in an interview with Corriere dello Sport, De Laurentiis has given more insight about his thought process behind the Serie A’s financial failure and how it can be restructured.

De Laurentiis described the Super League ruling as an ‘epochal change’ in the sport and he criticised UEFA and FIFA about their approach.

He said: “The dominant position of UEFA and FIFA, which Europe today censures, has served to bestow bonuses in exchange for consent. Those who have governed up to now as monopolists have not understood that football is a business and needs growing revenues. If I invest hundreds of millions to participate in a circus that distributes peanuts, makes no profit and forces me to gamble more and more to keep an unproductive bandwagon going, the game is not worth the candle.”

He spoke about the declining financial value of the Serie A, comparing it to the Premier League and criticising Lazio CEO Claudio Lotito. The club CEO stated: 

“It never was [like the Premier League], except during the Berlusconi years. Also because for decades the management of the Lega managers was a failure. If I think that Lotito is causing me enormous damage by selling matches for five years to the same interlocutors who perhaps will no longer exist on the market when the contract expires. And he sells them at a lower price than the last three years.”

He further stated: “In 1986 there were sixteen clubs in Serie A. Today there are twenty and revenue has decreased, rather than increased. Until it is established that the majority is calculated with the weighted vote of the clubs, i.e. giving more weight to those who earn the most, nothing will change. The small teams will continue to dominate the league with a no-nonsense logic, because their only objective is to avoid relegation. This ruling urges us to change the rules.”

On the Super League, De Laurentiis stated that while it was the wrong move in 2021, it has brought about a change in the thought process.

“The Super League was a wrong move, which however brought about this change. Now we need to do some serious thinking. I spoke with Florentino Perez and we agree to put some real entrepreneurs around the table, no longer and not just nominal presidents. Because today football is administered by elderly people in terms of age, but above all they are without vision.”

De Laurentiis proposed one way to reform the Serie A on the basis of teams that attract the most number of fans at stadiums.

“I would immediately do an E series, where E stands for elite. [It will only have] city teams with a significant number of fans. A Palermo that gives economic guarantees cannot make the move from Serie D. A Bari that has a base of one million two hundred thousand fans cannot stay where it is. So I say: to the seven or eight teams that dominate the table, let’s add another seven that may have the same ambitions. And we finish in 14 places in the elite series. Then two Serie A groups of twenty teams. And the rest is the lower league, which acts as a nursery.”

De Laurentiis has been very vocal about his views regarding the financial issues in Serie A and it isn’t a surprise that the Napoli CEO has a thought process that aligns with these views.

Kaustubh Pandey | GIFN