MADRID, 30 May. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Italian Luciano Spalletti confirmed this Monday that he will not continue on the Napoli bench, whom he has led this season to the ‘Scudetto’ 33 years later, as he wants to take a sabbatical year to focus on his family.
“Out of respect for the club, I immediately told De Laurentiis (president of the Italian team) that I need to sit still for a year. I’m a little tired and I want to be with my daughter Matilde,” said Spalletti, who still had a year left on his contract , during his time at a sports and business forum.
The 64-year-old coach confessed that “sometimes people leave for love” and that a city like Naples “doesn’t deserve normal things but much more”. “He deserves things that we have to ask ourselves if we are still capable of giving them to him. Since I don’t think so, I will take a small step back,” he said.
These words of Spalleti came to confirm those of Aurelio de Laurentiis, who had declared that the coach was “a free man”. “After 50 years of filmmaking and many exclusives when someone comes to you and says ‘I basically did the best I could, a cycle of my life is over, I still have a contract but I’d rather have a gap year’. What do you do, do you oppose? You have to be generous in life, I never expect anything in return”, he pointed out on ‘Rai 3’.
Now, facing his replacement on the Neapolitan bench, the Italian media suggest that De Laurentiis will try to sign former Spanish coach Luis Enrique Martínez, currently without a team and who already knows Serie A from his time at AS Roma.