2024-01-05 23:40:42
It’s “Dry Napoli”, a season without a trophy for the team which topped the Italian championship last season and intoxicated its supporters with a third coronation after 33 years of drought, but which has suffered a series of setbacks since August.
Even before their team closes the first phase of the 2023-24 Italian championship, against Torino on Sunday (3:00 p.m.), Napoli fans are dizzy when they look at the Serie A standings.
Naples occupies 8th place with 28 points, 17 lengths behind the leader, Inter Milan (45 pts). At this stage of the competition last season, Napoli were leading the championship with 47 points and were nine points ahead of their first pursuers, AC Milan.
Among the calamitous statistics of Napoli version 2023-24, one particularly attracts attention: the reigning Italian champion has played 13 matches in all competitions in front of his audience and won only four of them for six defeats and three draws!
The person responsible for this rout has long been identified: Rudi Garcia. Despite an unchanged squad – apart from the departure of South Korean defender Kim Min-jae, who left for Bayern Munich – the French coach, claimed his many detractors, transformed in just a few weeks an irresistible team under the direction by Luciano Spalletti into a laborious group, without ideas and openly contesting his tactical choices.
Except that his successor Walter Mazzarri, recalled in mid-November after having already coached the club between 2009 and 2013, displays an even more negative record.
Under his leadership, Napoli certainly won their ticket to the round of 16 of the Champions League where they will challenge FC Barcelona, but the team went from 4th to 8th place in the league (7 pts in six matches) and sank in the Italian Cup as soon as it entered the fray against Frosinone (4-0).
So much so that the omnipresent president-owner of the club Aurelio De Laurentiis found someone else responsible for this calamitous season: himself…
In any case, this is what he said during a press conference called at the last minute after his team’s draw against Monza (0-0) on December 29 for the last match of the year.
“Everything that has happened so far is my sole responsibility. It is not the fault of the players or the coaches, it is my fault and I take full responsibility for it,” insisted the film producer who had not hesitated until then to present Garcia as a casting error that he should have dismissed as soon as he was presented.
“I must apologize to the Neapolitans and our fans, but the championship is still long, we will be active during the transfer window to try to recover the lost time,” he promised, before giving one of his mysterious meeting at the end of January to “tell (his) truth”.
In the meantime, Napoli will be deprived of their Nigerian striker Victor Osimhen who, after extending his contract at the end of December until 2026, flew to the African Cup of Nations (January 13-February 11).
Another blow for a team which, in addition to the C1, can win a trophy with the Italian Super Cup (January 18-22), the starting goalkeeper, the Italian international Alex Meret, injured his thigh and will be absent for at least a month.
It’s not all bad news: in 2022-23, Napoli broke everything economically with a profit of almost 80 million euros, when Inter and Juve respectively recorded losses of 85 and 123 million euros.
But these results fuel the distrust of fans towards De Laurentiis who they criticize for his reluctance on the transfer market and whose departure they are increasingly in number.
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