Napoli president Aurelio de Laurentiis has confirmed he ‘wanted to buy’ Erling Haaland for around £40 million before arguably the finest centre-forward in world football made his way to Premier League champions Manchester City.
During a 13-game run between late-December and late-February, the stuttering Serie A champions scored only ten goals while drawing a blank on no fewer than seven occasions.
How Napoli could have done with a striker of Erling Haaland’s talents during a spell which brought a premature end to Walter Mazzarri’s second spell in charge of the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona.
Haaland, after all, needed less than an hour to put five past Luton Town in the FA Cup in midweek. The planet’s finest finisher very much ‘one that got away’ for a Napoli side who stormed to the Scudetto last term but could yet finish outside the top half this.
Manchester City star was once a Napoli target
“I remember when I discovered Haaland. For me, he was a great player,” recalls De Laurentiis, Napoli’s long-serving but unpopular president speaking at the Financial Times’ ‘Business of Football Summit’, via Tuttomercatoweb.
“He was at Salzburg. I wanted to buy him for 50 million (euros, £43 million).”
Much to De Laurentiis’ frustration, Haaland’s late agent Mino Raiola appeared to already have the Red Bull graduate’s career path mapped out. Haaland would eventually join Borussia Dortmund in January 2019, the German giants triggering the release clause in his Salzburg contract and paying less than half the fee De Laurentiis was willing to part with.
“Then Mino Raiola took me into a living room and said to me; ‘For Haaland, I’ve already taken care of it. Don’t worry. Don’t get in the way’.”
“And the negotiation was interrupted. He had already organised everything (for Haaland) and arranged his benefits.”
Erling Haaland nears 30 mark after five-goal haul
Napoli certainly put their recent goalscoring issues behind them on Wednesday, slamming Sassuolo 6-1 away from home as Victor Osimhen – much missed during Nigeria’s run to the final of the African Cup of Nations – hitting a hat-trick.
Haaland, meanwhile, has 27 in 30 games this season to maintain his remarkable, almost one-goal-a-game career average.
De Laurentiis also confirmed recently that Napoli missed out on Radu Dragusin in January. The £26 million defender rejected ‘more money’ in Naples to join Tottenham Hotspur instead.