Juventus made an offer to sign Marek Hamsik before the transfer deadline ended, Napoli president Aurelio De Laurentiis confirmed on Tuesday.
The Slovakian midfielder was a late summer target for the Serie A champions, but De Laurentiis said Napoli quickly rejected the €25 million offer.
De Laurentiis said holding on to Napoli's top players was just as sound a strategy as buying new ones for the same price.
"This is a team who have kept their stars," De Laurentiis told Radio Kiss Kiss. "We had offers totalling €98m, not including [Real Madrid target Gonzalo] Higuain. Not selling them is the same as if I had bought players worth that much.
"I offered [Roma sporting director Walter] Sabatini €28m for [Alessio] Romagnoli. Roma then sold him [to Milan] for €3m less than previously discussed.
"Juventus wanted Hamsik for €25m, I asked them for [Stefano] Sturaro and [Daniele] Rugani and they refused. They got Hernanes instead!"
Napoli's biggest splash on the trasnfer market this summer was for Romania defender Vlad Chiriches, a player whom Napoli coach Maurizio Sarri said he knew "very little about."
"Chiriches is a good buy, if anything the problem isn't that we couldn't Rugani or Romagnoli, it's that identifying and getting the best central defenders is difficult," De Laurentiis said.
"If you're man-marking, you need a certain type of defender, if not there's a different attitude, and that's why we've struggled."
De Laurentiis also said that Napoli would try to sign Nathaniel Chalobah on a permanent basis if the Chelsea loanee excels in Italy.
"I hope he's a great player, but for example Sarri is not using [Ivan] Strinic because he's got less training in his legs than the others," the president said.
"The new buys are likely to be used in a month or so. Chelsea didn't want to give us a buyout clause, because they have a lot of faith in him, but if he's a revelation then we'll go on the attack."