New banner brands De Laurentiis 'senile' as ultras stand-off deepens

On Sunday morning, a new banner appeared in the city calling Aurelio De Laurentiis "senile". It is the latest episode in a stand-off between the president and the club's long-standing ultras groups that has run for months, with sharp words on one side and chants and banners in the city on the other.

Among the ideas circulating to ease the tension is a mediating role for Valentina De Laurentiis, seen within the family as the person best placed for direct dialogue with the Curve (the hardcore ends behind the goals). The organised groups, it should be said, are asking for nothing more than the right to display banners and flags at the stadium without bans or appeals to the Interior Ministry.

There is precedent. A few years ago, after another cold patch, De Laurentiis met representatives of the groups and the photo from that meeting went round the internet. Staging the same picture now without real substance behind it would achieve little — what matters is a genuine agreement, not another symbolic image.

A dispute like this suits nobody, least of all now. Napoli are ninth with 7 points after five games — the worst start under this ownership in the last ten years, according to the data — and the fanbase is already split over Allegri's position. Opening another front, with the Curve, in the club's centenary season is the last thing the team needs.

Anyone who remembers the choreography for the fourth Scudetto, with a Napoli-supporting child taking the tricolour scarf from his Inter-supporting counterpart, knows what a Curve can produce when it pushes in the same direction as the team. That energy is being spent, instead, on a back-and-forth that earns nobody points.

The first test comes soon. On Saturday 10 October, Napoli return to the Maradona against Frosinone, the first home game since the tension hardened. Tickets are already on sale — it is there, on the terraces, that it will become clear whether the rift has widened further or whether something has genuinely shifted in the meantime.