either you insult him or you take them – Corriere.it

Naples prepares the party for the conquest of the third Scudetto in the club’s history, and a strong image, daughter of the 33-year wait. Naples, however, also the unseemly show created by a group of 700 organized fans who play a personal game against the president Aurelio De Laurentiis and live off wars among themselves: they don’t sing in the stadium, they threaten whoever does, they light smoke bombs and insult the owner of the club for 90 minutes. And for those who don’t sing against him, the punishment is triggered: the brawl started like this. happened while the team was shipwrecked on the pitch at the mercy of the prowess of Milan and Leao. Yesterday morning the Neapolitan patron was in the offices of the commissioner Alessandro Giuliani. To ask for the footage from the cameras (over 200), to take the path of legality with determination: Stadiums cannot be a free port, he repeats every time.

There are supporters and supporters: in Naples they are two very different sides of the same coin which once again exalt the city and its atavistic contradictions. In their home stadium, the ultras, during a match that could be fundamental for the championship and also in the Champions League perspective, do not support the team but claim the denied right to carry flags and banners in the stands. They terrorize children and families who want to sing and take the whistles of the part of the stadium that would instead take the field with the players in order to avoid a defeat. And so, while the mayor Gaetano Manfredi tries to convince the improvised street artists that the monuments should not be painted blue and the Minister of Culture Sangiuliano, a Neapolitan by birth, makes the same appeal, the scene has just taken place in the stands of the Maradona more surreal than history, football and otherwise.

De Laurentiis (will) be the president of the third championship but also the man most hated by the ultras. And he doesn’t back down an inch. His battle against illegality began by banning tickets and favors to the ultras, siding with the police, sponsoring the English model without fear of retaliation. Are the ticket prices at the Maradona high? De Laurentiis has never hidden that he is a self-financing company and that football is a business. He has labeled some stadium goers as drug addicts or outcasts who were repeatedly surprised by the police with doses of drugs. He has taken insults, many, but he has conquered the part of the city that he expects to celebrate and that is grateful to him for having pulled Naples out of the abyss by bringing it to the Europe that counts. That’s enough for him, and he doesn’t really think about changing the stadium regulations to favor the entry of flags and drums. De Laurentiis thus: take it or leave it. Lend Captain Di Lorenzo to the Municipality for a video-appeal against the monuments painted in blue. And this is the battle of civilizations that now prefers.