Luciano Spalletti he lays himself bare in a long and sincere interview with Corriere dello Sport. The Tuscan coach, who last year brought the Neapolitan team back to victory after 33 yearsmaking an entire population live a real dream, currently coach of the national team, tells what led him to make the decision to leave Napoli.
Spalletti: “It would have been easier and more natural to move forward”
“I chose sadness“, said Spalletti: “I chose and embraced sadness when I left Naples after that thing. It would have been easier and more natural to move forward, work with a group that we had brought to the top, enjoy the happiness of the moment, that which the people of Naples felt“.
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What is his winning weapon?? “For me, coaching means loving the player, knowing how to defend him, adding something to him. There is the shy footballer who is unable to fully express his potential and so I intervene with work. At Napoli I had a couple of them. But now he puts down the pen. With exercise I try to bring the shy person into the ideal condition to raise the level of performance. I can’t do anything on the surface. The first year in Naples I lived in a hotel, magnificent, they brought breakfast to my room. Then I placed the cot in the office. In order not to waste a single second, even the smallest detail, I saved myself the half-hour drive from Naples to Castel Volturno“.
Yet, the experience with the Azzurri nIt hasn’t been a downhill road: “I have always decided for myself. The job means 365 days of hard work. After the first year my collaborators said to me “but what are we left to do? They all sold.” Mertens, Koulibaly, Ghoulam, Ospina, Insigne, Fabian Ruiz had left. So much quality. I wanted to feel like the coach of Napoli and he is only the coach of a team if he does something actually important. When you meet De Laurentiis the first thing he tells you is “we have already arrived second and we must always be in the Champions League”. Clear and direct message. So I left again to get that thing over there, it happened, I could have stayed longer, we had taken the performance graph to the highest level”.
Is exactly about the blue patronSpalletti concluded: “Talks with De Laurentiis? I have two ears and one mouth. I know how to listen and speak at the right time. De Laurentiis has great communication skills, a fluent language. And then it always depends on which De Laurentiis you find yourself in front of, there are at least four or five. With artificial intelligence they could try to invent others“.
