Aurelio De Laurentiis: 'Goodbye Mertens, Napoli have to say no'
Dries Mertens, who has been with Napoli for a long time, is now a free agent and will not sign a new deal with the Serie A team.
Aurelio De Laurentiis
, the president of
Napoli, has confirmed that
Dries Mertens' nine-year stay with the club is over. This is because the forward turned down a new contract offer.
The
Belgium
international's old contract ended last month, but the
Serie A
team wanted to get him to sign new terms. But De Laurentiis says that Mertens did not want to take the club's offer and is now looking for a new team.
"I love the club, but I can't forget that football is a business as well as a hobby," he said on Radio Kiss Kiss. "Unfortunately, that sometimes means doing the opposite of what the fans want.
"When a fan asks me, 'Why don't you keep Mertens?' I can only say that he offered to work for us for one more year because he knows that he will have to retire when he turns 35. I have to say no if he makes it about cold, hard cash. If I have to pay Mertens a high salary, that would take money away from the budget for next season."
Napoli has already said goodbye to Lorenzo Insigne, David Ospina,
Kalidou Koulibaly, and Arkadiusz Milik during this transfer window. Mertens will leave the Diego Armando Maradona Stadium, where he has played since 2013, when he moved from PSV. He will leave as the club's all-time leading scorer with 148 goals.
Last season, the 35-year-old scored 11 goals in 30 Serie A games. His 126 minutes per goal were the fourth-best of any Serie A player who scored at least 10 times.
He played for Napoli 397 times, which was less than Insigne (434),
Antonio Juliano
(505), Giuseppe Bruscolotti (511), and Marek Hamsik (520). De Laurentiis said more about the contract he offered to the club legend. "I offered him €4 million per season gross, but he turned it down," he said.
"So I told you, your son Ciro, and your wife, thank you for everything you've done here and the great goals you've scored, but we can't do more than we can. I need money so that I can buy young players who can play for Napoli in the future. When we got new players like Mertens and Koulibaly and got rid of all the older ones, the fans were skeptical, but they became champions here."
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