In football, every transfer window is an opportunity to make amends. Every summer, or winter, teams across Europe try to find the pieces in their puzzle to be the best version of themselves for the new season. In Italy, if you look at the top teams, you can say with confidence that most of them are in the right direction. But the emphasis is on most of them. Because the case of Naples is exactly the opposite.
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If you were to ask three average soccer fans who Napoli’s star is, there’s a good chance their answer would be different. There are those who will say that it is Dries Martens, others will claim that his partner in the front half Lorenzo Insigne is the team’s man from the south of Italy, and at the same time there will be people who will go in the opposite direction and fortify themselves in the position because it is the brakeman Kalidou Koulibaly who symbolizes the success of the Neapolitans.
Well, today it doesn’t matter anymore – because within one summer, all three are no longer part of the club. Martens ended his contract and is currently without a team, Insigne also ended his contract and signed with Toronto from the MLS and Koulibaly was sold to Chelsea for 40 million euros. And let’s not forget goalkeeper David Ospina who was also released. And who came in their place? Well, nothing, sort of.
“We have decided that Koulibaly is not for sale,” said Napoli’s sporting director Cristiano Giuntoli, after the brake has already been sold. “We want to be a competitive club, as we have been throughout the years. We tried to keep him until the end, we offered him a very high salary, but in the end it was not possible,” he added sadly at a press conference held by the team this week.
The one who failed to complete the press conference is Luciano Spalletti. Napoli fans, who saw their team fight for the championship until the decisive moments of last season, read the map carefully and interrupted the coach when he tried to talk about the state of the squad. By the way, the Italian media point out that Spalletti himself is also very unhappy with the situation that has arisen and has talked about it many times with the owner Aurelio De Laurentiis.
Watch Napoli fans interrupt Spalletti at the press conference >>>
And the truth? It’s hard not to understand the heart of the crowd crowding the stands of Diego Armando Maradona. Because unlike the wave of releases of the significant base that led the team since the 2012/13 season to five appearances in the Champions League, four runners-up finishes in Serie A and three finishes in third place, it seems that worthy replacements are simply not coming.
As Assaf Akerman told on the “Radio Azuri” podcast, recently a protest started online by Napoli fans with the hashtag A16. And what is A16? The road connecting Naples to Bari. And who owns the clubs from these two cities? Aurelio de Laurentiis.
Among the Napoli crowd, the feeling is that since De Laurentiis bought the humble Serie B club in 2018, his attention has not been directed to the flagship team of southern Italy. And the truth? If you look at the results, they are right. In the 2019/20 season, the team finished in 7th place (an 11-year low), in the following season in 5th place and last season they finished third, but now they got rid of a significant part of their assets.
And what does the owner do about it? So far, the team that finished in third place last season has signed the left-back Matias Olveira, exercised the option on the full-back Andre Zambo Angisa, acquired the 22-year-old defender Leo Östergår for 5 million euros, with the most interesting name that landed in Napoli being Habicha The Georgian Havarchelia (21), who should be a long-term solution in the attacking midfield. But what about the short term? Meanwhile, Nada.
So who are the candidates who are mentioned as a possibility to join the team? In Koulibaly’s place, the names of Nikola Milankovic (Fiorentina, 24 years old), Francesco Accerbi (Lazio, 34 years old) and Kim Min-jae (Fenerbahce, 25 years old) came up. By the way, another player who did not come to Napoli this season is Paulo Dybala, who preferred Jose Mourinho’s Roma.
And what’s next? Well, the nightmare for Napoli fans may not be over. According to several reports, Fabian Ruiz, who is in demand in the Premier League and La Liga and ends his contract in a year, may be sold. To which we can add the undisputed star of the team as of today, Victor Osiman, who is of interest to Bayern Munich who lost Robert Lewandowski. If an offer does come from Bavaria, it will be very difficult for De Laurentiis to keep his striker.
Napoli’s main problem this summer seems to be the way they decided, or didn’t decide, to go. The procurement players who have arrived so far are mainly young and those who can form a basis for the long term, but these do not stand up to the statements of the managerial and professional team who want to remain competitive at the top of Serie A. The answers to this blunder lie with one man – Aurelio De Laurentiis.
