Luciano Spalletti wants to close the circle, add the last piece to a career relaunched by the conquest of the Scudetto with Napoli, before eventually deciding to quit football and retire to private life in the Tuscan hills. The national team is a very strong call. Luciano da Certaldo didn’t hesitate for a single moment when the Federation proposed him the post of Mancini. Contacts with the president Gabriele Gravina are frequent and cordial, both want the same thing, but neither one nor the other has the power to decide and announce the new agreement at the moment.
Here is the recent past that presents the bill: there is a third man, on holiday on a boat in the seas of Cilento, who can direct the fate of the operation. Aurelio de Laurentiis found himself in the middle of the negotiation. And his strategies are never simple or predictable. He has a private deed in his safe in which Spalletti, by whom he was seduced (winning Napoli’s third Scudetto after 33 years) and abandoned (he decided to leave), undertook to pay him a fine (almost 3 million euros which become 1 and a half since January) if he had coached a team throughout the season that is about to begin. It’s called the competition clause and it was agreed upon when Luciano left Napoli after the club had already exercised the option to renew his contract. A formal act handled by the lawyers of both parties which for De Laurentiis has an absolute value.
The line of the patron of the Neapolitans is clear for now: the penalty must be paid and then Spalletti can agree with anyone. De Laurentiis, from his point of view, does not think he is doing anyone a disservice, however he demands compliance with a written and formalized agreement before lawyers and trade unions. Naturally, the Federation officially remains out of this diatribe, but it is completely clear that there have been phone calls between Gravina and De Laurentiis. Diplomacy is underway, the outcome remains in the secrecy of the conversations between institutions that represent parallel worlds and which remain in balance. In these hours, rather, in-depth consultations are underway by the legal entourage that represents Spalletti – the firm that belongs to his son Samuele, a lawyer – to establish whether and how much the competition clause can be valid for the national team, a sporting asset of all Italian football and certainly not in antithesis with the sporting activity of individual clubs. Even the lawyers of the Football Association are working on the matter. A not insignificant quibble on which Spalletti leverages, a non-existent (or inconsistent) detail instead for the Napoli lawyers, for whom the commitment not to coach is attested, whether it is a club or a federation it makes no difference.
Mediation in progress
There is a whole world, sporting but also political, which is moving so that the former Napoli coach can be “released” by Aurelio De Laurentiis, but the Napoli president is allergic to pressure. The more he receives, the more he raises the wall, only to then reflect and revise the position of initial intransigence. The Giuntoli case — freed for Juventus after the several times publicized claim of compliance with a contract still in place — is only the latest example. This is the crucial moment of the negotiation in which there are inevitably three parties involved, foil is played and not epee. Every move is cautious but decisive. The feeling is that a solution can be found, even at the expense of an economic sacrifice (someone will have to do it).
2023-08-15 05:36:02
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