The outgoing coach oversaw a wretched half-season but the club’s problems run deep – as his replacement soon found outGennaro Gattuso’s debut as Napoli manager had to be delayed by half an hour on Saturday after pieces of the Stadio San Paolo’s roof broke off amid a heavy rainstorm. When the game against Parma finally did begin, it took only four more minutes for his team to start to come apartA throw-in for the visitors inside their own half looked innocuous enough. The ball was launched towards Parma’s target man, Andreas Cornelius, but sailed clean over his head. It ought to have been straightforward for the Napoli centre-back Kalidou Koulibaly to bring it under control. But he misjudged the bounce,...
Napoli have had the better of Liverpool in most of their past four meetings, something future opponents could learn fromFor the opening hour at Anfield the Napoli players must have been tempted to wonder, once again, what exactly all the fuss is around here. Take to the field expecting the red swarm, the hammers of the Premier League, a process of extreme thrashmetal disintegration. And what do you get?Not quite that, it turns out. Napoli have done this four times now in two years. In the first half they had the Premier League leaders pinned, rhythms stilled by the swarm of light-blue shirts around their usual passing triangles. It took Liverpool 35 minutes to muster their first effort on target....
Napoli showed how to play against Jürgen Klopp’s side by looking to exploit the space behind Liverpool’s full-backsIls sont les meilleurs! In the buildup to this game Jürgen Klopp had been at pains to play down any suggestion Liverpool came to Naples with an air of wider destiny about them. The notion had been put to the manager that Liverpool are, in a snapshot, the best football team out there: convincing Champions League winners last season and five points clear in the Premier League.Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day and for once Uefa’s cheese-laden anthem – the soundtrack down the years to so much autumn mediocrity – had seemed to strike the right note at...
The champions may have landed De Ligt, Rabiot and Ramsey but all has not run smoothly for Maurizio Sarri this summerItalian football’s summer break began in much the same way as the season had ended: with Juventus way out in front. By 1 July they had concluded the free agent signings of Aaron Ramsey and Adrien Rabiot. Then they did something far more audacious: signing Matthijs de Ligt from Ajax for €75m.Even for a club that signed Cristiano Ronaldo one year previously, it felt like a landmark deal. When did an Italian side last win a bidding war for one of European football’s most coveted young talents? At 19 years old, De Ligt had already started in a Champions League...
Late-season collapse was accompanied by strange events off the field as Napoli sought a second successive title in 1987-88When Napoli beat Juventus 1-0 in November 1985, thanks to a Diego Maradona free-kick, five people fainted in the stadium and two had heart attacks. On the television news that night, a stern-faced presenter announced: “So quite literally by scoring this goal, Maradona made a big mess.” A year and a half later, Napoli were champions of Italy, their first scudetto in a long, underwhelming history. The party went on for two months. Hundreds of newborn boys were named Diego, the girls Diega.These are details from the riveting, immersive new documentary Diego Maradona, made by Asif Kapadia, whose previous films have traced...