«From Hoollywood to spitting on the head on pitches»- Corriere.it

The Napoli championship is certainly not an improvisation, rather the result of a club model that Aurelio De Laurentiis started conceiving 18 years ago and then shaped over time. Luciano Spalletti, a thousand benches celebrated with Napoli, wins the Bearzot prize but first, in the hall of the Maschio Angioino in Naples, it is the blue president, once again, who holds the bench. Tells unprecedented backstory on his “transition” from cinema to football, but above all he reveals how he brought Lucio under Vesuvius, reiterating: “Stay with us”, thus unraveling any doubts about his stay next year. Now we need to understand what the coach thinks. On the eve of a historic milestone, De Laurentiis gives himself to amarcord: he remembers the moment in which he decides to take up football, to go from the Los Angeles film sets to the Serie C fields. “I thought, after a few months – reveals the president —that I had made a big career leap! From Hollywood I had ended up in the fields of the South where every time I got spit on my head and had to lock myself up in the locker room. My family didn’t approve of the decision to buy the bankrupt club and when they saw me in trouble they laughed, as if to say: you went looking for it. Now my wife is the number one fan of this team».

Visits to Spalletti

Napoli then turned out to be a rewarding experience, his club is about to make history with the victory of the third championship coming 33 years later. He arrives with Spalletti at the helm, and even the good Aurelio has a backstory to tell about him: «Gattuso was in Naples – he says -. But Rino at a certain point began not to feel well. I rushed to Milan, to the Spalletti house. I already wanted him before he returned to Rome, and we spoke on the phone. But on that occasion he said no. It was he who opened the door of his apartment in the Bosco Verticale for me. I told him: «Luciano I have a big problem, if Gattuso doesn’t feel well I need you. And he. decided: no, I’m coming in June. We talked a lot and in the end I snatched a yes from him, even if he needed it immediately. We went on until June because I’m a gentleman and I didn’t want to send Gattuso away. Maybe if I had done that, I would have gone to the Champions League earlier. To throw everyone off the track, I went through Conceicao, through Allegri who came four times to give me football lessons in my offices and then in the end the good Luciano came to bring us back to the top three in Italy and that too, last year, it could have happened something different”.

Lucio and the residence in the sports centre

The good Spalletti collects the award and puts all the enthusiasm he has accumulated over the last few months on stage. Not everyone knows that the Napoli coach lives in the Castel Volturno sports centre. His explanation: «Who has seen Naples, noticed how beautiful it is? I decided to live in Castel Volturno because the city is too beautiful, you can’t look at it. There are things so beautiful that one is impressed. Everyone gets blue eyes if they look at Naples… Footballers have to be careful. With the euphoria and the results achieved, they risk feeling satisfied. I have to say, however, every time I try to make these speeches, at the end of the game they look at me and say ‘did you see that it’s not like that?’. They are made of a different paste. The Champions? It must be lived totally, it is something that has never happened to me in 64. Players have to be careful, time sometimes passes and never passes again. You have to enjoy these races. We have a high-level medical staff and in every match we start from scratch, the advantage in the championship is not taken into the field». All happy ever after, soon. The tale of Naples continues. Spalletti as well?