In Italy, this season is easy to sum up: it’s all about Napoli.
Anyone who has been to Naples even once has learned: in Naples there is only the Napoli football team. And the rest of the world is just that: other people.
Napoli and the others
This Serie A season is the first after many, since Diego Armando Maradona, when the neapolitans were able to honour their history. This season has been about Napoli from the start. The others didn’t matter.
Anyone who has been to Naples even once has learned: the neapolitan language is the most beautiful in the world and always comes before Italian. And Diego Armando Maradona, footballer and man, known for his genius in dealing with the round ball, but also for his sins, was a saint. A saint who guards the city, to whom he restored the fighting spirit and dignity. It’s not negotiable.
Eagle
Championships are won when you don’t make mistakes with small and medium-sized teams. The way Napoli won at Salernitana (who are fighting to avoid relegation) was reassuring for the white-and-blue fans. The ship sails around storms, and if problems arise Osimhen appears to score.
Victor Osimhen is the only Nigerian playing football in Europe today that would have had a place in Nigeria’s 1994 golden team, alongside Okocha and Amunike.
Napoli are on the march, and the only others who might have a say were AC Milan. Except that time is passing and Milan are further and further away from what they once were. The “Milanese devil” is a memory, especially after the recent 0-4 draw with Lazio and 2-5 vs Sassuolo. This season’s fashion is the Supersonic of the South.
Passion, fury and money
This almost miraculous gear built by Spalletti lacks nothing: it has an ideal age (the average age of the Neapolitans in the match against Salernitana was 27 years and four months), it has a reliable defence, a serious midfield and an explosive attack.
The Neapolitans have built over the last few decades, with passion, fury and money, a Supersonic capable of sweeping everything in Serie A and even the Champions League. You’ll say, of course, that it’s superstition that the Neapolitan renaissance really began after Diego Armando Maradona’s rise to the Heaven. But, you know, Neapolitans believe in superstition.
PS: After the death of Gianluca Vialli, here are his soul teams, Sampdoria and Cremonese, both with one foot in Serie B. And Juventus is not feeling too good either after being penalised 15 points and left without the president and other managers.
