Despite being contracted to the club until 2013 and leading his charges into the Champions League, reports from Sky Italia began to circulate on Monday that coach Walter Mazzarri was on the verge of being sacked by Serie A side Napoli. The former Sampdoria coach was appointed in October 2009, bringing to an end the turgid reign of Roberto Donadoni. Donadoni had replaced Edy Reja at the San Paolo that March and was sacked following the standard “run of poor results”. Mazzarri has in fact been given a vote of confidence and reconciled his differences with the club.
As the man who led the Vesuviani from Serie C1 to Serie A as they regained their rightful place in Italian football, Reja can argue that he was harshly dealt with. However, Napoli are an ambitious club and Reja’s leadership had gone stale. Few at the time voiced any opposition to his dismissal.
The man behind the sackings of Reja and Donadoni is film producer and club president Aurelio De Laurentiis, a charismatic chief with a wicked turn of phrase and a willingness to use it at extremely frequent intervals. De Laurentiis is a talker, a man who famously encouraged Ezequiel Lavezzi, Marek Hamsik and Fabiano Santacroce to shun supposed approaches from the Premier League by declaring that English women don’t use bidets - the dirty b*stards.
But he also seems to have Napoli at heart and he’s been a wonderful custodian for the most part, guiding the club back from the murky obscurity of the lower leagues to a legitimate Scudetto challenge and a return at long last to European football’s premier continental competition. Save for the rocket-fuelled sacking of the exceptionally poor Donadoni, De Laurentiis hasn’t developed a reputation for having a particularly itchy trigger finger. Indeed, by Italian standards he seems relatively stoic, keeping his eye on the long term prize while the likes of Maurizio Zamparini react far more emotionally to adversity on the field.
Perhaps the greatest indication that De Laurentiis’ tutelage is ultimately good for a club of Napoli’s standing was the appointment of Riccardo Bigon. Pierpaolo Marino was sacked in September 2009 and, with a tweak to the role, was replaced as Sporting Director by Bigon. The new man has perhaps surprisingly helped the club keep hold of Lavezzi and Hamsik and looks to be effective in the transfer market, overseeing the signing and contract extension of Edinson Cavani. De Laurentiis must take credit for handing Bigon the role regardless of whether Marino genuinely deserved to be given the heave-ho. The man at the top made a well thought-out decision that worked for his club.
Mazzarri has taken Azzurri from nowhere into the Europa League last season, and went one better this term by securing a Champions League spot with points to spare and at least making AC Milan sweat as they swept their way back to the top. He is quite rightly regarded as a hero but it doesn’t appear to have been impossible for him to have been replaced.
While Napoli’s tifosi would have been justifiably frustrated by Mazzarri’s sacking, there’s something more noteworthy at play than some over-emotional egomaniac lashing out because his club is failing, because it’s not. Napoli’s fall and rise is the stuff of legend, and right now the club is at the pinnacle of what it can realistically achieve for the time being. Mazzarri’s end wouldn’t have been the same as Carlo Ancelotti’s at Chelsea, where hugely respectable achievements on the pitch simply failed to meet the ludicrous expectations of a dictator (although it’s worth pointing out that Chelsea’s fans were not unified in support of the Italian by the end of the season).
De Laurentiis is clearly a smooth operator, but the trouble with a football club being led by a benevolent megalomaniac is that it’s still a megalomaniac. The spat with Mazzarri has uncovered De Laurentiis’ not-very-secret weakness: pride, both personal and in Napoli. If you’re not 100% committed to the club you’re out, and it doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve done. In a way, there’s something quite endearing about that.
Mazzarri’s crime appears to have been an unwillingness to commit to Napoli beyond the season that just finished. He has been linked with the Juventus job, and has been reluctant to talk about his future or quash the rumours. In recent weeks, Mazzarri has even seemingly given (admittedly weak) indications that his future does not lie in Naples. But with an improved contract apparently in the crosshairs of the coach, De Laurentiis moved to criticise Mazzarri as a careerist for whom the wellbeing and progress of the club was a secondary concern. After conciliatory comments made by Mazzarri ahead of Sunday’s draw with the Bianconeri, the ball was in De Laurentiis’ court and the pair met with Bigon and “the president and the coach Mazzarri laid the foundations of a new partnership to continue”.
In many of Europe’s leagues, at all levels, there is frequent discussion about the various ownership models available to football clubs. In West London, Roman Abramovich rules Chelsea with an iron fist, ruthlessly hoofing out good coaches for not reaching the very highest of heights at every possible opportunity. Supporter ownership works for some (AFC Wimbledon and Exeter City perhaps the most noteworthy in England) but not for others, like Stockport County. Brentford went down that route too, but opted in the end for a few quid from a benefactor willing to enshrine the Bees United group’s leadership role within the club and its veto right over any potential sale of Griffin Park.
While my personal preference as a general rule is effective supporter ownership, benevolent dictatorship still has its place, particularly at the top where fans simply can’t bankroll the kind of success they themselves would demand. One of the most respected of those is Randy Lerner, the American owner of Aston Villa, but he lacks something De Laurentiis possesses: a genuine and heartfelt connection with the club he re-founded after its bankruptcy in 2004.
The key positives in owners like Lerner and De Laurentiis are clear. They have the money to spend to keep their clubs afloat and successful, and the awareness and respect to do so responsibly and, when appropriate, generously. By and large their duty of care prevents them from making the rash decisions to which those of a different style (read: Abramovich) can be prone. But when it comes to the crunch they still have the power to act on a whim, and irritating them is extremly unwise. Mazzarri may yet discover as much.
Tags: Aurelio De Laurentiis, Napoli, Serie A, Walter Mazzarri
[...] via Napoli, Mazzarri and the dark side of benevolent megalomania « twofootedtackle.com. [...]