While Italian reports suggest Aurelio De Laurentiis has no intention of selling Napoli, The Athletic maintains the American consortium still has hope a deal can be done for over €2 billion.
The Corriere dello Sport claimed this morning that De Laurentiis had received and promptly rejected a proposal worth around €2 billion, cutting off the talks before it even reached the due diligence stage.
However, The Athletic insist the situation is not quite so clear-cut, as the American group remains confident it can still resolve the existing sticking points and reach an agreement.
This source insists the negotiations began over six months ago and have only recently stalled.
The consortium is said to be represented by Matt Rizzetta, President of Serie C team Campobasso and Napoli Basket, while he is also a founder and managing partner of private equity firm Underdog Global Partners.
His plan would be to unite the football and basketball teams of Naples into a multi-sport operation.
Their ambition would include an offer to privatise and redevelop the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona, although any kind of privatisation of stadiums is extraordinarily difficult in Italy.
Napoli are one of the only clubs to consistently run at a profit in Italian football, but that is also largely because De Laurentiis revived it in Serie C2 following bankruptcy in 2004.
They won the Scudetto twice in the last four years, and have qualified for the Champions League.
