Aurelio De Laurentiis was thousands of miles from Naples, on a Los Angeles red carpet, when the conversation inevitably turned back to Italian football politics.
The Napoli president was attending the screening of the club’s ‘AG4IN’ documentary, a celebration of the Antonio Conte era that has re-energised the Partenopei. Yet even in Hollywood, the pull of the Azzurri and the uncertainty surrounding the FIGC followed him.
Pressed on whether Conte could swap the San Paolo touchline for the national team bench again, De Laurentiis did not flinch. He didn’t close the door. He nudged it open.
“Conte to the national team? Yes, I think I’d lend him if he asked me,” he said, as quoted by Gianluca DiMarzio.
For a club president who has built his latest project entirely around Conte, that is no small admission. Napoli have made the former Italy coach the centrepiece of their sporting vision, the man tasked with dragging them into a sustained era of title contention. Yet De Laurentiis recognises the magnetism of the Azzurri job, especially for a coach as intense and patriotic as Conte.
There was a clear caveat, though. And it landed with force.
“Until there’s a serious partner, I think he’d refrain from imagining himself leading something completely disorganized,” De Laurentiis warned, turning his fire on the current structure of the Italian football federation.
That single line cut straight to the heart of the wider crisis. Italian football is in a period of transition after the resignation of FIGC president Gabriele Gravina, and the power vacuum has left the national team’s future wrapped in uncertainty. Conte’s name, inevitably, has surged back into the debate over who should guide Italy forward, but De Laurentiis made it clear: the problem is not the coach. It’s the house he would walk into.
So the Napoli owner did what he often does. He named his candidate.
For De Laurentiis, former CONI president Giovanni Malagò is the man to rebuild the federation and restore credibility.
“He would be perfect to be first the commissioner and then the president of a new federation,” he argued, backing Malagò as the figurehead of a reset at the very top of the Italian game.
The message was unmistakable. If Italy want someone of Conte’s stature back on the bench, they must first fix the environment above it. Serious leadership, then serious coaches.
In the meantime, Conte’s job is clear. Whatever noise swirls around his future, his present is painted in Napoli blue. The Partenopei sit second in Serie A, seven points adrift of leaders Inter Milan, still within striking distance but with no margin left for error.
Napoli’s season now hinges on turning Conte’s ferocious standards into a sustained charge. Every game carries weight, every dropped point could be fatal in the title race. Parma await on Sunday, another test of whether this team can keep Inter in sight and stretch the Scudetto conversation deep into spring.
Rumours over a second act with the national team will not fade anytime soon. They rarely do when it comes to Conte and Italy. But until the FIGC finds the structure De Laurentiis demands, the coach’s battlefield remains Serie A – and a Napoli side still chasing a giant.
