Juventus, Inter, Lazio, Milan and Atalanta are queuing up for a crack at the Scudetto after a summer of change in ItalyThe post-Scudetto cleanup in Naples took more than a month, local authorities reporting they had gathered up enough banners and blue and white ribbons to cover the length of 400 football pitches. Those were just the ones hung on public property. In bars, restaurants and the windows of homes all over the city, Napoli’s first Serie A title in 33 years will continue to be celebrated as long as there are people to remember it.Now, though, they must defend their crown. Easier said than done: Italy has had a different champion in each of the past four seasons. A...
Win over Inter was another landmark for the Partenopei but fans are left wondering what next for title-winning manager?Napoli reached another landmark in their title-winning campaign, a 3-1 win at home to Internazionale making this the first season in club history when they have beaten all 19 Serie A rivals at least once. Yet this latest feat was overshadowed by reports that the manager, Luciano Spalletti, might not return next season.On Friday the club’s owner, Aurelio De Laurentiis, left room for doubt when he told Sky Sport: “Spalletti is a superstar and superstars need a place where they can express the best of themselves. He found that here and it all worked. [But] in life freedom is an immeasurable and...
Few fans expected them to win a first championship in 33 years, but Luciano Spalletti’s team have been an irresistible forceThis was not the stadium where Napoli had hoped to seal their Serie A title but after a 33-year wait you can make any place feel like the promised land. There are more than 500 miles of road between the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona and Udinese’s Dacia Arena, and thousands of supporters travelled them to be present when their team crossed the finish line.They were made to suffer a little while longer, watching Napoli fall behind to a brilliantly taken goal by Sandi Lovric. But when Victor Osimhen swept an equaliser home through a crowded penalty area at the start...
The result was seen as a formality when city officials moved Napoli’s kick-off time but it gave the visitors a point to proveYou would think the prefect of a city as superstitious as Naples might have worried a little more about tempting fate. To place a loaf of bread upside down on the dinner table is to invite bad luck on yourself in southern Italy, yet Claudio Palomba had no qualms requesting that the footballing calendar be flipped on its head so the home team could win Serie A at a more convenient time.Napoli were originally scheduled to host Salernitana on Saturday. Seventeen points clear at the top of the table, with seven games left to play, they knew a...
Napoli winning the Serie A title is a fait accompli but Juventus’s continuing legal issues leave so much else up in the airIt was not the goal that sealed Napoli’s third-ever Scudetto, but it sure felt like it, an emotion so overpowering that some players could not keep their feet. As Giacomo Raspadori’s volley skidded through Wojciech Szczesny’s legs and into the Juventus net, Piotr Zielinski simply collapsed on to his back, lying spreadeagled on the Allianz Stadium turf.Raspadori’s strike arrived in the 93rd minute, securing a 1-0 win. Napoli scarcely needed the points – they were already 14 clear of second-placed Lazio before kick-off – but five days removed from a Champions League quarter-final defeat to Milan, they needed...