Napoli boss wants 80-team tournament

MILAN: Napoli president Aurelio De Laurentiis on Monday called for the Champions League and Europa League to be abolished and replaced with a new 80-team competition in order to revive “boring” European football.

Napoli sealed second place in Serie A for the second consecutive season on Sunday, after a last-gasp 2-1 win over Cagliari. But film-producer De Laurentiis, who bankrolls Napoli, believes UEFA’s two European club competitions are outdated, proposing a new format that would see 80 teams compete in a single competition.

“The Champions League and the Europa League should be abolished,” De Laurentiis told Italian daily Corriere della Sera. “The Champions League is now for a select few, while the Europa League has become a sort of consolation prize. It’s all very outdated. Our football is becoming boring. We are often confronted with the same sparring partners.”

De Laurentiis proposes a single tournament with “the top seven teams from the Italian, French, English, German and Spanish leagues and the first four of the Portuguese, Dutch, Belgian, Swedish and all the other leagues”.

The teams would be divided into four groups of 20 teams, with a draw to decide the calendar and who plays at home. “I would call it the European Cup and the games would be played on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, thus respecting the placement of the national championships over the weekend,” the 69-year-old said

The Napoli boss opposes plans by the European Club Association (ECA) and its president Andrea Agnelli, who is also the boss of Serie A rivals Juventus, to play the group stage with four groups of eight teams.