Sitting in a hotel in Liverpool, England On FootBall

He is also never lacking an adversary some villain standing in the way of progress, holding the game back through lack of imagination. His list has previously included not only UEFA but FIFA, Adidas, Nike, collective television deals and the Italian political establishment, among others Many others.

He does all this with a relish and a frequency befitting the scion of one of Italy’s great cinematic dynasties. In his eyes, soccer (and life, most likely) is entertainment. Creating a stir comes naturally It is all part of the show.

Sitting in a hotel in Liverpool, England, in December, on the eve of what would turn out to be Napoli’s final Champions League game this season, he did not require a vast amount of assistance, then, to land upon his current bête noire.

He would like, he said, to change the way prize money is handed out by the major leagues. He thinks underperformance should not be rewarded. Rather, he thinks it should be punished. “You finish first, you get €100 million, for example,” he says “You finish second, you earn €50 million, and so on. But if you finish last, you pay a fine.”

This has been a recurrent theme for De Laurentiis this season. He has singled out Frosinone a minor team from a town between Rome and Naples, promoted to Italy’s top league, Serie A, for only the second time in its history last year as an example of a club that arrives in the top flight “already relegated.”