Benitez will have huge budget to improve squad over the summer.
Napoli owner Aurelio De Laurentiis has revealed that coach Rafa Benitez will be handed an incredible transfer budget of €124.5m this summer.
Speaking during a Q&A session on Twitter with supporters, the Napoli chief explained the situation now that striker Edinson Cavani had secured a move to PSG.
The Uruguayan international signed for the Ligue 1 champions in a deal reportedly worth €64m, and De Laurentiis has now suggested that that fee will be added to the figure he had already earmarked for the summer transfer window.
“If we add that €64.5m to the €60m that we had in our budget already then we get €124.5m that Napoli will invest with diligence and experience,” he said on Twitter.
As mentioned by the movie mogul, he expects the money to be spent wisely by Benitez, who has already brought in the likes of Dries Mertens and Jose Callejon.
However, De Laurentiis revealed that while Real Madrid defender Raul Albiol is having his medical with the club ahead of a switch to the San Paolo, the Partenopei are also negotiating over the transfers of Gonzalo Higuain and Leandro Damiao.
The latter is a more likely solution to fill the gap left by Cavani, although negotiations with Internacional suggest that the two parties hold different valuations of the player.
Higuain had been expected to join Arsenal but De Laurentiis is hoping to hijack the Real Madrid striker’s move to the Emirates, but at this stage it remains to be seen how advanced talks are between the two clubs.
It is unclear how clubs will react to the comments made by De Laurentiis, having made it public knowledge of how much he has to spend the likes of Internacional and Madrid may now place inflated price-tags on their targets.
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