In a year when Argentina and Leo Messi win the World Cup, it is impossible to imagine a more emotional closure to the death of Diego Maradona than a championship for Napoli for the first time since 1990. Then, it was the same Maradona who led the Partenopei to the second Scudetto in the club’s history. 32 years have passed and when in January 2023 the team from the south of Italy stands with an 8-point advantage at the top of Serie A, even the great skeptics in the land of the boot will find it difficult to bet against the talented group of Luciano Spalletti.
As fate would have it, Napoli’s first game after the World Cup break will be against Inter (9:45 p.m., Live broadcast on ONE2 channel). The Nerazzurri, who are 11 points away from the top, will try to stop the machine from the south of Italy and know that any result other than victory will make Saturday’s Scudetto task for the blue-black side of the fashion city almost impossible. A Neapolitan victory, and it can be said that the southerners ‘kicked’ out another significant candidate for the title and will take a significant step towards it.
The successful transfer window in Europe
This year’s Napoli is the best team in Serie A, and some would say one of the most impressive in all of Europe. If until the month of September her tremendous ability was known mainly to the mice of the Italian league, then, in the opening round of the group stage in the Champions League, she burst into consciousness all over the old continent when she dismantled Liverpool 1:4 in an overwhelming football display. She finished the group stage in first place with 15 points, on the way to a comfortable meeting on paper against Frankfurt in the round of 16.
Naples experienced a shift change last summer. It lost some of its most significant anchors, led by Kalidou Koulibaly who left for Chelsea, Fabian Reus who moved to Paris Saint-Germain as well as the pair of extremists Lorenzo Insigne and Dries Martens, two club legends who were already very far from their prime. These departures left a very large void and in Italy they were particularly skeptical about the chances of the team from the south of Italy to give a significant fight at the top, many argued that it should settle for a place in the Champions League and the fans were also especially angry in light of the wave of departures of the stars and demanded Spalletti’s dismissal a season earlier, but here The man who recorded the most successful transfer window this season enters the picture.
Cristiano Gintoli is not a familiar name to world football fans. In fact, even in Italy, Napoli’s professional manager has been a fairly anonymous figure over the years, but after last summer, no one could remain indifferent to the formidable team he built, with minimal investment. While most of the attention is taken by the colorful president Aurelio Di Laurentis, Gintoli is a man of quiet work.
South Korean stopper Min Jae Kim arrived from Fenerbahçe to replace Koulibaly for €18.5m, joined by Norwegian Leo Östergaard from Brighton for €5m. Giacomo Raspadori, who starred in Sassuolo and is also returning from Inter, eventually arrived in southern Italy on a loan of 5 million euros with an obligation to buy at only 25, while Giovanni Simeone, who tore down nets in Verona, also arrived on a modest loan of 3.5 million euros per year, and all deliver the goods.
Above all of these, the highlight is of course the acquisition of Habitza Kabrazdalia (or ‘Kabaradona’ as he is called by Napoli fans), the Georgian meteor, who was purchased for 10 million euros from Dynamo Batumi and instantly became the best player in Serie A this season when he is involved With 13 goals (7 goals and 6 assists), more than any other player in the league. Gintoli has given all the professional managers in Italy a school for the successful transfer window, including Inter’s Leffa Marotta, which also made Juventus to polish their eyes on him as the one marked as the replacement of the current holder of the job of the professional manager at the old lady, Federico Cerobini.
Napoli’s efficient window, under the masterful management of Gintoli, made them one of the deepest teams in Europe today, with two or more players in almost every position, especially in midfield and attack. The right wing is manned in rotation by the Mexican Harbing Lusano and Matteo Politano, on the left line stars Cabezdalia, but Napoli knew how to manage even without him when he was injured and his place was taken by Alif Almas and Giacomo Raspadori and separately, Simeone erased the concerns surrounding the repeated absences of Victor Osiman who tends to get injured often .
The fact that these are different and diverse players, those who know how to do more than one role in the attack well, makes Napoli one of the most unpredictable teams in the world today, with the best attack in Serie A that has scored 37 goals so far, while it threatens the goal on average about 18 times per game, of course above all in the league.
The most exciting football by far
In terms of football, Napoli is definitely included in the list of the most impressive teams in the 2022/23 season. In a world where teams tend to give up the ball in an attempt to use interceptions for quick passing attacks, Napoli is a team that wants and knows how to hold the ball. She does it the best in Serie A by far, with her average possession standing at exactly 60%. Better, less good, the team from southern Italy wants the ball at their feet.
In style as well as in its formation, it sometimes reminds of the European champions, Roberto Mancini’s Italy. A formation of 4-3-3 that sometimes looks like 4-2-3-1. Critical to the whole possession issue are Zambo Angisa and Stanislav Lobotka who are having a tremendous season, with the latter even mentioned as attracting interest from Real Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti. While the Slovakian Lobotka organizes the game from the back perfectly, Angisa is the more dynamic midfielder of the two and often in the game you can see him making movements to the sides and joining from the second line in the center of the box, something that in the past only Piotr Zielinski, who plays above both of them as a number 10, would do. Naples, you don’t know where trouble will come to you.
And you also need someone who knew how to combine all this talent into a single composition, when this whole orchestra is successfully conducted by Capt. Spalletti. The veteran coach has never won the championship, but is known in Italy for the happy football that his teams usually play, which could be seen as far back as 2004 when he led Udinese to a sensational qualification for the Champions League and went on to win two cups with Roma, who were a particularly enjoyable team in the years he coached, but not this that is really capable of threatening the Scudetto.
Spalletti knows how to create the balance and use all his players in a maximal way and along with clear tactical instructions, allows offensive and creative freedom that is visible in every replay. More than once this season it was impossible to miss how he celebrates the goals together with the players. Unlike other great Italian coaches (who said Allegri?), he is not a big believer in distance and always gives the players the feeling that he is with them, one of them. He might be a little reminiscent of Carlo Ancelotti in this regard.
Inter’s last chance
Five losses at this stage of the season is far too much for a team that wants to run for the championship, and this is the situation of Inter, which finds itself already 11 points off the relegation zone and knows that it is now facing its last chance to seize it and end the season with a title that many would consider sensational by any standard .
Even before the disappointing results and despite losing the championship to Milan last season, there was a consensus in Italy about the fact that Inter is the best quality team, the one that needs “the least” to threaten the goal and put the ball in the net, which is full of quality defensive and attacking players that no other team has.
Sometimes it plays the deadliest football in Serie A, but at the same time it loses unexpected points and pays for serious mistakes, also by its coach Simona Inzaghi, who still sometimes has difficulty managing the game and receives a lot of criticism for his fixed style of play, with regular and late substitutions, when Mainly tends to change player for player and never changes formation.
Inter went into the World Cup break after two consecutive victories, one of which was 1:6 over Bologna which showed, once again, how much potential lies in the Nerazzurri. When they are in the ‘zone’, it is difficult to find an Italian opponent who can stand up to them. It was also the game in which Leotro Martinez broke a four-game scoreless streak and scored his seventh goal of the season, but at the World Cup things did not go as Inter’s number 10 had hoped. Although he returns to the land of the boot as a world champion, he lost his place back in the group stage to Julián Albers from Manchester City, who made a splash and with 4 goals was the leading striker of the Albiceleste until the golden cup. Lautre seemed to be particularly nervous and it will be interesting to see how this affects him back in the league.
The one who really experienced a difficult World Cup is Romelu Lukaku. He returned in the summer with fanfare from Chelsea on loan for a second term at the Nerazzurri, which he left as Serie A top scorer to Cristiano Ronaldo and champion of Italy, experienced a difficult injury and in the World Cup played only 10 minutes in a loss to Morocco and a half in a 0:0 draw with Croatia. Belgium was eliminated in the group stage and Lukaku played a significant part in that with hair-raising misses against Luka Modric and his teammates.
Lukaku has one goal this season in the league and he is far from fulfilling the expectations of the dream attack that his arrival brought, but he is expected to start alongside the one who easily and very rightfully receives the “never-ending” title of Italian football, aka Edin Dzeko. At the age of 36, the Bosnian, who has been through everything in his career, may no longer be as fast and intense as he used to be, but shows time and time again that his outstanding feature, the deadly finish, will not be taken away by the time clock either. At the back, Nicolo Barella will have to help them, who has already equaled his goalscoring record for a season in Serie A when he scored five goals this season.
The trend in this game will likely be clear. Simona Inzaghi and Inter are expected to give the ball to Spalletti’s players, who know no other way. They will try to control and dictate the pace in Giuseppe Meazza as well, while the Nerazzurri will defend, press low and try to sting in passing attacks.
This season’s Napoli have already shown that they have made the leap when it comes to big games. That 1:4 over Liverpool was only the first swallow which was followed by victories over Milan, Atalanta, Roma and Lazio in away matches. And yet, it seems that this game against Inter may be a landmark for the hot group from the south of Italy and if they win it, it will be very difficult to stop them on the way to the double joy of Diego up there, in the sky.