Di Lorenzo-Napoli case, agent Giuffredi speaks: “He would have remained alone with Conte as coach”

The Giovanni Di Lorenzo case and more. The agent Mario Giuffredi at 16:30 he will speak to the press at the Gold Tower Lifestyle Hotel in Naples to clarify one of the most discussed cases of the summer transfer market. Obviously, there will also be talk of his other blue clients at Napoli, namely Gaetano, Mario Rui, Politano and Folorunsho. The live text of the conference will be broadcast shortly.

Giuffredi’s press conference begins

“I wanted to thank everyone here for accepting the invitation. About a week ago, Giovanni Di Lorenzo, in agreement with the club, communicated through a letter his desire to stay at Napoli and continue his life and professional journey with the club. And his private life journey with the city. For my part, as the player’s agent, I feel it is my duty to clarify a little about what happened, about everything that has been said, but above all we want to clarify this for two simple reasons: the first is because we care, the player and I, that Napoli fans should know clearly what the real situation was. There is no need to have negative afterthoughts about Di Lorenzo as a person. Unfortunately, fans read what the newspapers write, what the TV says, so many times they don’t know the truth of what is really happening. One of the reasons why I decided to have this meeting with the street is clarity for the fans.

Then there is another reason. Giovanni is the captain of Napoli, the captain of Napoli will never be the same as the captains of the teams in the rest of the world. The captain’s armband of Napoli was worn by the greatest footballer of all time (Maradona, ed.), we want everyone to have a clear idea of ​​the person of Giovanni Di Lorenzo and that it is not clouded by what has been said in recent months. We just want to face the path of the championship and we want to do it calmly, without returning to this matter.

You know how difficult the championship just ended was. After winning the Scudetto, Giovanni found himself with some radical changes. There was a change of coach, there was a change of management because Giuntoli left after many years and Meluso arrived. And there was a change in the modus operandi, with president De Laurentiis much more active in the life of the club. Nobody expected to have a championship in tenth place. Think about what a difficult year it was for the players. Di Lorenzo, as well as all his teammates, experienced very difficult moments, but they all thought that at a certain point they would be able to get the team back on track. Instead, time passed and things got worse. What did this lead to? To frustration towards the boy, it led to disappointment. He felt helpless because he couldn’t solve the problems. As time passed, the situation got worse and worse. He’s a boy who went through a difficult year, who he never thought he would live.

In addition, in addition to the technical aspect, Giovanni had to deal with many other problems and took over a bit of the management. In addition to being a footballer, he had to take part in many problems, not of a football nature, but also those between the club and the team. When a player is alone and has to deal with all the problems with the president, you get to the point of desperation and frustration, you no longer have the strength to react. All these problems continued until the end of the championship. The more Sundays passed, the more difficult the situation became. Even though he arrived devastated, Giovanni – and I say this because I talk to him every day, especially at the end of the championship, as I do with all the players – always told me that if Antonio Conte had arrived he would have stayed, he was the only coach who could have made him stay. But not because he wanted to abandon the ship and the club in a difficult situation, but because he was afraid that another type of coach could leave him in the same situation. Conte was the only coach who gave him guarantees from all points of view, even the personal one because he would not have faced all the problems alone as happened last year. In my conversations with Manna I always said that Di Lorenzo would be left alone with the arrival of Conte.

Then there were two or three situations that led to a certain sequel. The first, during Fiorentina-Napoli: Di ​​Lorenzo is away, he doesn’t go to play the match, he stays in his room because he wasn’t feeling well; at the end of the match, when the team goes to catch the train, the bus picks up Di Lorenzo at the hotel, they try to call the boy and he doesn’t answer the phone. The doctors enter the room and find the boy collapsed. It was an episode due to a lot of stress. The next day, however, it is written in the newspapers that Di Lorenzo pretended to be sick because he had an agreement with Juventus and didn’t want to go to the match. There couldn’t be anything more ungenerous than that. He was upset about that situation because, even though the club knew what had happened, no one from the company denied those unfounded rumors.

Then came the time of Napoli-Lecce. I don’t remember a captain being replaced three minutes from the end in a team already contested for a terrible year, receiving boos from 50 thousand people. Receiving boos individually is a totally different pain than the boos you receive with the rest of the team. It was another distressing episode for the boy. I am convinced that the Napoli-Lecce episode was not due to the strategy of president De Laurentiis, but was due to a coach who did something not even in the wildest fantasy could you think of doing. A disaster by Mr. Calzona. The president had nothing to do with it. But even on that occasion the boy would have expected someone to say a few words and do his thing”.