“Napoli’s Scudetto Triumph: Beyond the Myth of Maradona to a Sustainable and Winning Team”

Guido Vaciago Friday 5 May 2023, 08:09

This Scudetto is heavier, more beautiful and more important than the other two in the history of Napoli. This is the Scudetto of Napoli and Napoli, of society and of the city, of an extraordinary group and its people. Maradonism is the religion of Naples, one might add sacrosanctly. But this triumph brings Napoli and Naples beyond the myth of Diego, consecrating a team, a serious and sustainable project of its president, the work of a coach and his players. Maradona wrote an unrepeatable fable, this Naples is an essay on how to build a winning team. A hyperbolic narrative centered on the superhero was built on the two championships from thirty years ago, which ended up crushing everything and engulfing it in a secular and fundamentalist cult; on the other hand, an enlightened future can be built on this championship, made up of unpopular but lucidly courageous choices.

Naples, the success of programming

Napoli, in the summer, lost one of the three best central defenders in the world, Kalidou Koulibalyreplacing it with a bet, and dropped out Lorenzo Insigne, who was one of the favorite sons of that Maradonian and Neapolitan narrative, replacing him with the one that almost everyone, at the beginning, had considered only for the jumble of consonants that made up his name. In the summer retreat, in Dimaro, from the simmering discontent of the fans I splashed insults at De Laurentiis, who was invited to take the motorway to Bari. Today Kim Min-jae and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia extend the list of nuggets, found and valued by the club and are the new idols of the fans. De Laurentiis receives the well-deserved ovtion of the fans. This type of managerial coldness allows Napoli and Napoli to look ahead and not have to constantly look back, to plan instead of dreaming. All of this is one thanks to the president Aurelio De Laurentiis and the management he has chosen, starting with Cristiano Giuntolithe sporting director who has grounded the philosophy that everyone trumpets (win sustainably) and that few manage to achieve.

Spalletti and the bet for the future

Confirmed Luciano Spalletti, for example, is a move that denotes coherent planning and confidence in a technical project that was taking shape and blossomed at the right moment. The first part of Napoli’s season, the one in which he gave football lessons to half of Europe, was a source of pride for Italian football. The bet, now, is to stay at high levels for a long time, follow up success with more success and make legendary what is now already historical. And it will be very interesting to read the next moves of De Laurentiis’ Napoli, who elbowed away from Serie C to win the Scudetto: seen on a diagram, the trend curve is clear and points upwards.

PS – De Laurentiis stated that this is the Scudetto “of honesty”. We have already heard this sentence and it didn’t really bring luck to whoever uttered it, having then found himself with a FIGC report accusing him of sporting offences. On the other hand, a Palestinian coach from two thousand years ago said to the public and his twelve players (a very short squad, but tough): «Let him who is without sin cast the first stone». And none have ever flown. It’s the Napoli championship and that should be enough to enjoy it to the fullest, like the truest joys.