ROME: Napoli president Aurelio De Laurentiis did not have to wait long before his threat to move the club out of the city bore fruit.

The city council responded by agreeing a deal with the Serie A club to remain at its Stadio San Paolo home, which will now be redeveloped.

De Laurentiis had threatened to ‘move house’ unless Mayor Luigi de Magistris specified how much the city wanted for the council-owned San Paolo.

The film director is keen to develop a new stadium on the site of the San Paolo, which first opened in 1959 and underwent extensive redevelopment to its current 60,000 capacity for Italy’s staging of the 1990 FIFA World Cup.

De Laurentiis had said that unless De Magistris named a price by Tuesday he would make arrangements to build a new stadium 45 kilometres away in Caserta. However, a breakthrough has been made following a meeting between the two men on Wednesday.

“I can announce that the San Paolo will remain Napoli’s home,” said De Laurentiis. “We reached an agreement, there will be a bilateral commission set up by the Naples Council and Napoli football club, but we have already found the solution which will be innovative.

“Napoli will have the rights to ownership of the stadium and the adjacent zones, giving everything we need to make it to the maximum level of European standards. The Caserta option has been abandoned. We got into details, establishing a deal on the fact this stadium will be in Naples with guaranteed returns on investment.”

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