Born in Naples on 03/10/88, graduated in Philosophy and Politics from the Oriental University of Naples. He has been working for TMW since 2008 and was deputy editor for 10 years. Sent to follow the national team
Napoli, who lead the table after six days of Serie A with a +1 over Juventus, seem like a completely different team compared to the one that last year defended the Tricolore in the worst possible way. 44 days have passed since the 3-0 defeat in Verona against Hellas, the last time Napoli showed off its dark and controversial face from last season, and since then everything seems to have changed. Thanks to a coach who in a month and a half put a team back on its feet that hadn’t been a team for too long. Thanks to a president who invested even without cashing in: without succeeding in the sale of Victor Osimhen, a center forward loaned out of time.
Napoli took the field against Hellas in mid-August and had only one new face on the pitch, the free agent Leonardo Spinazzola. On Sunday evening, to conquer the top, Conte lined up Lukaku, McTominay and Buongiorno in his starting eleven.players costing a total of more than 90 million euros. They are the big players in an unprecedented purchasing campaign that led President De Laurentiis to spend around 150 million euros and collect just over ten. The budget, given ‘Transfermarkt’ in hand, is -138 million euros. Only Brighton spent more, clubs like Manchester United and Paris Saint-Germain spent much less and usually spend much more than Napoli.
Yet this time De Laurentiis agreed that he could not do otherwise. After a season in which he made everything possible wrong, he first admitted his mistakes in front of the microphones and then moved on to the facts. He hired the most successful Italian free coach and paid him a salary that usually does not fit into Napoli’s logic. Then he complied with his wishes by transforming him into a manager with full powers even in the purchasing campaign.
De Laurentiis hoped to revolutionize the squad with the money deriving from the sale of Victor Osimhen, but when he realized that no one would even come close to his requests he still fulfilled his coach’s wishes. Taking on the business risk. A risk that can only be taken on by those who have their accounts in order but above all their hands untied. Those who invest their own money do not manage (and must make the money of others profitable).
Before Napoli, Milan had also considered Antonio Conte’s name. Yet Gerry Cardinale, number one of the ‘RedBird’ fund, just couldn’t accept the idea of a coach who not only asked for more money than the budget allocated for the coach, but also wanted to influence and decide which players to bet on. Because Conte is a coach-manager: he doesn’t outline an identikit, he names names. And also in this case, even with Osimhen still in the squad, he had indicated a now 31-year-old Romelu Lukaku as the player around whom the new project would revolve.
Lukaku represented a major expense for Napoli. It is no coincidence that Roma managed to get him on loan from Chelsea a year ago. Had Napoli not been there, this summer would probably have gone the same way, or we would have gone to Arabia. And instead Conte asked De Laurentiis to buy him, to invest in him to make him feel at the center of the project. Napoli’s number one agreed, aware of the fact that this expense of 30 million euros for the price tag, in addition to 7-8 in salary, will never go back.
Conte and Lukaku represented a cost. Maybe they will return with the future sale of Victor Osimhen, but maybe not. And it is precisely costs and uncertainty that are what the funds that manage the clubs must avoid in every way because they do not fall within the logic of producing value in the future. Just as the risk of spending money on assets for which you have no reasonable certainty of a return is not included.
However, in football, which fortunately is not yet all finance, sometimes there are onerous operations that are necessary to make the whole mechanism work: without them today in Naples it would not be possible to breathe a different air, as the table-topper.