De Laurentiis' weirdest ideas to change football

Aurelio De Laurentiis reasons as a film producer, often his gestures and declarations seem to be imagined to be pronounced on a stage, with a great histrionic manner that fills all the expectation of spectacle that the public now has for him. He does not do this to seek attention, but to nurture an ongoing dream idea that stems from a strong individuality and is part of his being a showman. 

For these reasons, the bizarre ideas for revolutionizing football that the SSC Napoli president proposed during an interview with Repubblica should come as no surprise. De Laurentiis had already made statements in the past in which he proposed alternative solutions to improve and make football more modern, attractive, and spectacular. Some of these can be legitimately considered as a good basis for memes, others have entered in the following years more and more into the football debate, looking at the sporting model of the American leagues, considered by De Laurentiis as a step ahead of European football.

Leaving it to time to decree which of De Laurentiis' proposals become memes or visionary ideas, it is worth remembering or lining up some of the Napoli president's strangest choices. Among the points touched on several times by ADL is the issue of the estrangement of younger kids from football as a consequence of choosing new forms of entertainment. "The video game industry is super-billion dollar, there are fantastic products that kids play either alone, which is even more negative, or connected in groups. All this distracts them from football. And then they need to be brought back to the right tracks for a moment." De Laurentiis then imagines that the minister of education should provide a couple of one-hour lessons a month in which "Spalletti or Ancelotti" explains the fundamentals of football to middle and high schoolers. This for the president would bring kids closer to football again, making them "super-experts". 

Also in the last interview Aurelio De Laurentiis referred to the American model, in particular for the experience at the stadium, where families should be able to spend a whole day or be able to celebrate weddings: 'Maybe the Church would be disturbed, but it would be enough to set up a blessed altar, we did it in the retreat at Dimaro'. Always following the model of the American leagues, ADL has stated in the past that the league should have the first league matches played abroad, in ten different cities around the world, so as to export the product as has been done several times in recent years for the Super Cup finals, played in Washington, Beijing, Doha, and Shanghai. 

Other uncommon marketing ideas for the football scene have been realized in recent seasons, among them that of producing kits that are always new and customized according to the time of year, which has attracted attention to Napoli merchandising. Emblematic is the recent decision to produce a shirt for each player for the Scudetto, on which the player's face is depicted. 25 different jerseys in limited editions at a price of €150.

As for ideas concerning the pitch, De Laurentiis proposed to abolish half-time, or to replace it with a two-minute break every 10 minutes, allowing coaches to intervene as in a time-out. Even the five substitutions are not enough and should be more, just as the rule on yellow and red cards should be changed, which should become time penalties (10 minutes for yellow, 30 for red). To entertain spectators from home De Laurentiis has in the past also proposed that players wear small cameras on their heads, shoes and knees, an experiment that was tested just this season by clubs such as Cologne and Sparta Prague.

ADL in February 2023 also spoke out about changing competitions and leagues, arguing how the current competitions are wrong, which are designed to make UEFA collect money that we do not know what happens to it. De Laurentiis proposes to put a billion on the table and to organise a European championship 'but without those balls with the wrong draws'. The idea is to make two championships, one for the minor federations and one with the top six of the five major leagues, playing dry games against everyone. All these matches for Aurelio De Laurentiis should be played from April to October, leaving five months for the players to rest, go into training camps and play with the national teams. 

It is easy to mistake De Laurentiis' idea of football as a comedy of the absurd and not the comedy of art that the Napoli president seems to have in mind. ADL wants to sell the novelty of a football product that must resemble a beautiful 3D film with special effects and not a neorealist film whose ending we already know. De Laurentiis with Napoli has always communicated and managed the players and merchandising differently from the scheme of other big clubs in Italy and elsewhere. The President's work leading to victory in 2023 looks like that of a scientist who tries to combine potions without worrying that some mixture will explode, meanwhile you know what a spectacle the explosion and the smoke.