Only De Laurentiis’ infamous contracts separate Conte and Napoli

It's done now, but signatures are missing. The coach and the president are champions of the clause and the quibble. When will the official yes come?

NAPLES – De Laurentiis kept himself afloat: his Countdown will last another ten days. While the entire press is pushing Napoli’s relaunch operation, they are taking the deal as closed in a blaze of “he said yes”. Conte said yes, the president said yes, the infamous square has been saying yes since last autumn, in the first period no. Napoli is ready to bow to “tremendismo”, after too many months of devastating sporting recoil. What’s missing? Why don’t they make it official? Everyone in Naples knows it: the contract is missing. Which is a kind of catchphrase. De Laurentiis’ agreements are now contractual pornography: long, complicated, full of clauses and quibbles. Many, many negotiations that were considered done ended up falling through – the oral tradition is this – due to the contracts.

While waiting for the blessed signatures, Manna and the coach – it seems – are working on the innards of the agreement which will tie him to De Laurentiis for three years, so much so that some members of his staff have already contacted the Napoli players to guarantee themselves a working base . But everyone knows that at the moment of the presidential intervention the negotiations will take on a bradyseismic pace. It is still an unprecedented operation worth 60 million or so just to change technical leadership.

The fans on social media have already prepared the president’s business plan and Conte’s tactical revolution (complete with changes already made match by match, and motivational speeches sketched out), but an underlying superstitious cynicism remains.

The suggestion, given the context, has already gone further: among the unemployed, Conte is number one. And he is in turn a world champion of the paragraph and the attachment. Every move he makes provides adequate financial coverage, he calculates every possible scenario. It would be enough to remember that in the transition from Inter to the Premier League he managed to collect a severance pay instead of the dismissal, paid to find a rich new contract at Tottenham. He doubled his income while supplementing himself with a collaboration with Sky. Conte would be an excellent “technical” minister of the economy, his.

These are feverish days for negotiation fetishists. All that’s missing is the signature on the happy ending. That – considering the characters at play – will be just the beginning.