Napoli owner plans 70,000-seat stadium in Naples

Napoli owner Aurelio De Laurentiis says the club wants to move to a new 70,000-seat stadium in east Naples, while the city council would rather renovate the publicly owned Stadio Diego Armando Maradona.

“We have identified a 38-hectare site in east Naples on which I plan to build a 70,000-seat stadium, with 120 boxes, restaurants and everything else,” De Laurentiis told a press event in Rome on Wednesday.

He said the stadium would also include an interactive museum and that the project could take 24 months. “I won't be asking anyone for money,” he said.

The Stadio San Paolo was built in 1959, renamed after Diego Maradona in 2020 and is rented by Napoli from the city. It has a capacity of 60,000 and has an athletics track around the pitch.

De Laurentiis said the Maradona stadium should be demolished to make way for housing. He said local authorities wanted to invest 200 million euros to modernise it, but argued that amount would not be enough.

He also said he wants to replace Napoli's training centre and had bought 17.5 hectares in the north of the city for that purpose.