“Grateful to Koulibaly, Mertens preferred money”
Aurelio De Laurentiispresident of Naples, at Kiss Kiss Napoli, he talked about the transfer market, but also about relations with the fans, season tickets and shirts.
De Laurentiis and the ‘vil currency’: “There are those who left us only for money”
In a single outfit, the Azzurri changed a lot, losing technical points of reference in one fell swoop and also inside the locker room as Insigne, Koulibaly and Mertens. Farewells that has come to be absorbed as soon as possible, but De Laurentiis, late in Dimaro, declares that he has never lost sight of “his” Naples and returns to the controversies triggered by a famous press conference on economic requests in seat of renewal of the players who left: “Calcio Napoli is alive and well and very strong. Nothing shocking happened, maybe I was misinterpreted when I talked about the ‘vile currency’. In my opinion the blue shirt must be considered by a fan as a second skin, but also by those who have been wearing it for many years. When I hear them talk about raising salaries and some of them end up in well-known underprivileged only for money I wonder where is the sense of belonging.“.
“We must be grateful to Koulibaly”
ADL then entered into the merits of the sale of Koulibaly: “I let Koulibaly go because he came to ask me to leave ‘I have a few years of career, let me go’. Barcelona did not have the money, at Chelsea I said yes, but if a player wants to go and have an experience in a league like the English one, there is no opposition. We must be grateful to him“.
Naples, De Laurentiis: “Mertens refused a 4.5 million annual”
The highlight of the interview though Dry Mertens. De Laurentiis enters into the merits of the non-renewal of the Belgian, definitively closing the door to the fans’ hope of a return to blue for ‘Ciro’ and explaining the extreme attempt made to keep the best scorer in Italian history in the squad: “De Laurentiis is a club, but he is also a Napoli fan – the words of the president – In addition to passion, football is now an industry and as such it must follow the rules of the market, which do not always coincide with those of the fans. Mertens has proposed for another year because he knows that at 35, sooner or later he will have to retire. But he too made it just a matter of vile money, so I had to say no. Paying a disproportionate amount to Mertens would have made us miss the budget to get younger players in the sessions sessions. The last next offer I made him was 4 million gross for the season, he turned it down and at that point I couldn’t help but thank him for everything he did for us, wishing him the best and telling him we couldn’t do more. . Napoli needs young players for the seasons“.