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cm grafica delaurentiis cardinale
Emanuele Tramacere
Translated by

De Laurentiis: "Cardinale? A financier owner, he was saying nonsensical things. Investment funds have brought no benefit"

AC Milan
SSC Napoli
Inter
Roma
Juventus

The Foreign Press Association gave Napoli president and FilmAuro owner Aurelio De Laurentiis the floor, and he did not hold back on the future of Italian football. He launched a fierce attack on the investment funds that have moved into the ownership structures of so many clubs, and in particular on Milan chairman and owner, Gerry Cardinale. Here are his words as reported by CalcioNapoli24.


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  • Overturn football

    "I am passionate by nature. If I do something, it is because I enjoy it. Some play golf, some play tennis. I am single-minded when it comes to my profession: it may unsettle my wife, but that is how I am and I certainly cannot change.

    The point is this: when you go into the League, any kind of statement is entrepreneurial. If you want to do business, you have to overturn what is not working.

    In Italy, heaven forbid, you must not touch anything. There are laws dating back to the 1800s that, when you read them and see they have been amended, you struggle to understand them"

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  • The attack on Cardinale

    "It's difficult to change the mentality of those who run football. You spoke about funds, but there are owners who are not present. With great humility, knowing nothing about football, I did not know the environment and I attended all the Lega meetings.

    Three years ago, I invited Gerry Cardinale to dinner. He gave me a speech I did not object to, otherwise I would have had to pick him up and throw him out. He was saying things that made neither head nor tail from my point of view: he is an owner who had the needs of a financier and not of a real entrepreneur.

    I can be accused of anything, but I worked as a craftsman in cinema. I chose the ideas, I never produced a film proposed by others, only those born in our office. Even now with Carlo Verdone we compare ideas, we start from an idea and then develop it together. Then who finances the product? Me. Who physically makes it? Always us. Who markets and distributes it in Italy and abroad? Us"

  • Whoever have fewer fans than the big clubs must shoulder the burden

    "We're at a moment when a lot has to change. People are talking about DAZN: I was looking at an article on the lower percentage of viewers from one year to the next, but it makes money through advertising inserts.

    We need to understand, and I'll make another point: just as when I create an audiovisual work I market it myself... Those with fewer fans than the teams that drive things most, namely Juventus, Milan, Inter, Napoli and Roma, who are the engine of Italian football... these clubs should take responsibility for marketing football"

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  • No to lots of money for tours

    "They offered me six million dollars to go to Australia for one match and one in Singapore. Was I supposed to do 30 hours of travel and then prepare for the season? You have to get ready for the many matches, it seemed madness to me.

    Millions do not interest me. I organised matches in Trentino and in Abruzzo, inviting teams and paying them, and on pay-per-view I showed the matches for the modest price of 10 euros, it cost next to nothing.

    There is an entrepreneurial concept that not everyone respects: Cardinale and the funds invested money to make it yield returns for their investors. If after some time they have not made a profit, then what benefit has been brought? None."