Napoli president calls stadium a 'dump' in furious anti-politicians rant

Tom Weber

• 8 Nov 2025 11:32 CST
• 4 min read

News

Napoli president Aurelio de Laurentiis has called the club's famous Stadio Diego Armando Maradona a 'dump' in a furious tirade against Italian authorities.

The movie magnate, who has owned Napoli since the club's bankruptcy in 2004, believes that Italian authorities should give clubs more control over their own stadiums.

In Italy, football grounds are generally owned by local city councils rather than the clubs, which prevents teams from fully exploiting the commercial possibilities a stadium provides. It also makes modernising the arenas much more complicated.

In England and Spain, big clubs own their stadiums, allowing them to host other lucrative events such as concerts and to pocket larger shares of the income they generate. This is not possible in Italy, and it has repeatedly proved a source of frustration for the country's marquee clubs.

In the North, Inter and AC Milan have been battling local opposition for decades to build a new San Siro, as it is supposedly impossible to renovate the old one. Progress was recently made when the San Siro was sold to the clubs, but this sale is now facing legal scrutiny for alleged “turbativa d’asta” (big-rigging or manipulation of a public tender).

De Laurentiis' stadium rant

In the South, Napoli have been trying to improve their home ground, which has been known as the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona since the club legend's death in 2020. However, president De Laurentiis is frustrated with the lack of progress.

“The Maradona Stadium is a semi-dump (semicesso)," the eccentric owner thundered at the Football Business Forum this week. "I said it when [Carlo] Ancelotti arrived [in 2018].

“PSG pay the same amount for their stadium as Napoli, but they have exclusive rights and earn €100 million, while we only have it for three days: before, during, and after the event.

"It’s an old stadium, with an athletics track that isn’t ideal for spectators, and a moat that makes it even more remote. We have a problem with the Italian authorities, who perhaps, without realising it, are football’s greatest enemies. They don’t realise that there are 25 million potential voters.

"In 2013, we went to London to play against Arsenal. I visited the Emirates Stadium: 200 seating areas and 60,700 seats. The city granted the club permission to build housing in the area around the new stadium to immediately recoup their investment.

"This has allowed Arsenal to remain at the top for 15 years, despite not winning a league title since 2004. We need approval for residential use, even if not adjacent to the stadium. Those properties would guarantee income that would support the investment in the long term, as happened with Arsenal.”

De Laurentiis believes that the Diego Maradona is holding Napoli back and is too outdated to be suitable as a home for a world-renowned, modern club. He would like to build a new stadium in time for Euro 2032, which will be hosted by Italy and Turkey.

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