ROME, Sept 23 (Reuters) – Napoli President Aurelio De Laurentiis has a gift for turning football politics into cinema, and FIFA President Gianni Infantino found himself cast as both villain and hero in the Italian film producer’s latest monologue on the state of the game.
Speaking after receiving a lifetime achievement award from Italy’s Foreign Press Association on Wednesday, De Laurentiis stopped short of directly attacking Infantino, who has faced calls to resign after exploring a plan under which private investors would have bought shares in the World Cup and other competitions.
Instead, the Napoli owner offered a barbed assessment of the FIFA chief’s rise and global profile before admitting he had been impressed by the staging of this year’s World Cup.
“Infantino is someone who does his job from his point of view,” De Laurentiis said during the ceremony in Rome.
“If a once secretary is then allowed, once he becomes president, to do certain things and travel around the world wearing the FIFA badge, meeting Trump, meeting Putin, meeting everyone, what are we supposed to say to him? We have to say: he is doing his job from his perspective.
“This year, when I went to watch the World Cup matches, you saw these stadiums organised in an extraordinary way… I wanted to shoot Infantino; but when I saw how he had organised everything, I said: ‘No, I hold my hands up, I have to say well done.'”
EUROPE FOOTBALL’S POWER STRUCTURES
De Laurentiis, whose Napoli have won two Serie A titles and five domestic cups since he rescued the club from bankruptcy more than two decades ago, was less charitable about European football’s power structures.
“Sport is not in crisis in the United States, which is still that shining beacon; it is in crisis in Europe,” he said.
“What is the Europa League for? What is the Conference League for? To collect votes for those who then have to be re-elected within all those organisations which, as it happens, are beyond any legislative oversight, because they do whatever they want and, if you raise your head even slightly, they immediately want to cut it off.
“Look at what is happening at FIFA, look at what happened at UEFA in the past. There’s a series from a few years ago, which tells the story of all FIFA’s problems…”
De Laurentiis repeated his desire for Napoli to have a family-friendly stadium and said hard-core ultras had no place in that vision.
“I am against ultras, football must be about passion and educating children. You can’t have hooligans … or ‘ultras’ that are moulded from the Mafia, ’ndrangheta and Camorra,” De Laurentiis said, listing three of Italy’s organized crime syndicates.
“Until our police chiefs and government ministers get the situation under control it’s a major problem.”
(Reporting by Fernando Kallas. editing by Ed Osmond)
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