{"id":281121,"date":"2025-11-09T11:03:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T11:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/281121\/"},"modified":"2025-11-09T11:03:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T11:03:13","slug":"napoli-president-calls-teams-maradona-stadium-a-dump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/281121\/","title":{"rendered":"Napoli president calls team’s Maradona stadium ‘a dump’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Napoli<\/a> owner Aurelio De Laurentiis has described the club’s Stadio Diego Armando Maradona as “a dump” and said it is in urgent need of replacing.<\/p>\n

De Laurentiis was highly critical of the outdated venue and called on Naples’ authorities to let him build a new stadium to boost revenue and enable the club to compete with their northern Italian and European rivals.<\/p>\n

De Laurentiis, speaking to the Football Business Forum in Milan, highlighted Napoli’s inability to compete financially with rivals AC Milan<\/a> and Inter Milan<\/a> who can generate up to \u20ac14 million ($16m) from Champions League fixtures.<\/p>\n

“We can only get up to three million in that Maradona dump. That’s quite a difference, isn’t it?<\/p>\n

“I said the same thing when [Carlo] Ancelotti arrived [in 2018]. Paris Saint-Germain<\/a> pay the same rent for their stadium as we do, but they have full exclusivity and make 100 million euros a year, while we only have access for three days: before, during and after the match.<\/p>\n

“It’s an old stadium, with an athletics track and even a moat that pushes fans further away.”<\/p>\n

Milan and Inter have announced plans to demolish San Siro and replace it with a state-of-the-art arena after buying it from the city council<\/a> for \u20ac197 million ($226m)<\/p>\n

Napoli owner Aurelio De Laurentiis has slammed the condition of his team’s Stadio Diego Armando Maradona.\u00a0Mattia Pistoia – Inter\/Inter via Getty Images<\/p>\n

De Laurentiis, who said he would finance a new 70,000-seat stadium for Napoli, added: “Authorities here are football’s biggest enemies. They don’t realise there are 25 million potential voters who care about this sport.<\/p>\n

“We need more flexibility. Let clubs build or convert stadiums with integrated housing projects. Those revenues can sustain long-term investment.”<\/p>\n

Reigning Serie A<\/a> champions Napoli are currently top of the table, one point above Inter, Milan and Roma, before Sunday’s game at Bologna<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Antonio Conte’s side have been held to goalless home draws — by Como<\/a> and Eintracht Frankfurt<\/a> — in their previous two matches and are still without the injured Alex Meret<\/a>, Kevin De Bruyne<\/a> and Romelu Lukaku<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bologna, four points behind the leaders in sixth place, were also held 0-0 in their last match, at home against Brann in the Europa League.<\/p>\n

They will be boosted by the return of winger Riccardo Orsolini<\/a>, but Jens Odgaard<\/a> and Juan Miranda<\/a> are injury doubts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Napoli owner Aurelio De Laurentiis has described the club’s Stadio Diego Armando Maradona as “a dump” and said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281122,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-281121","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-soccer","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}