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Napoli president vows to honour promise of top signing after box office success

Reuters

Santa Claus is coming to Naples.

Napoli president Aurelio De Laurentiis made a promise to the club's supporters prior to the opening of the January transfer window: If fans went to go see De Laurentiis' film "Christmas with the Boss," he would reward them with a top player signing.

The film was a box-office success. "That promise to buy a truly important player will be maintained," De Laurentiis said.

"At Napoli we need champions - players who are right for the role they're needed for," De Laurentiis said. "Obviously when you want to buy you also need a club who's willing to sell - you can't point a gun at anyone - but we have already started negotiating with a number of players in a number of countries, all of whom would be key to improving our squad.

"When you have such quality in the squad as we do, improving it is a difficult task in itself!"

While Napoli fans can't exactly shake the box to find out what their New Year's present holds, De Laurentiis did reveal some details on what kind of player he's looking at bringing on at the club:

I don't want anyone too young, not a 17- or 18-year-old, irrespective of how good they are. ... I prefer to pay a few extra millions but have the certainty of a bit more experience. This doesn't mean going after a 30-year-old. A player born between 1990 and 1992 is ideal for our purposes, and would be young enough to refresh the current squad and to be able to learn the coach's methodology straightaway.

I'm stating the obvious but none of the players we're interested in has played under (manager Maurizio) Sarri before and learning a new coach's tactics takes time, so we're trying to be quick.

I also have to say that we did well not to sell any of the many players that we were being asked for. It would have been so easy to yield to the siren of money, but we resisted that temptation in order to give the new coach a really strong team. And indeed, now we have an extraordinary squad as well as world-class technical staff. We finish 2015 with pride.

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