hello, i’ve a question about napoli from this summer:
why de laurentis he took garcia has coach of napoli?
from the summer i read everyday a lot of comment, and heard a lot of people, about how wrong is garcia is as coach of napoli.
in fact the team is not performing well.
from a team that had win a scudetto, a strong team, why bring garcia of everyone knows he would not have been able to manage the napoli?
also, bayern bought a important player as kim and the club buy natan to replace him. No? he is not the same level of kim.
i don’t understand.
Unpopular opinion: it’s not Garcia’s fault.
Fans are being, as usual, completely unreasonable and bipolar about a very common and predictable “sophomore slump”.
Let’s face it: Napoli winning the Scudetto last year was an exceptional occurrence. A mix of the team overperforming and all their rivals having an underwhelming season. Akin to what led the likes of Verona, Sampdoria, Lazio and Roma to win in the last 40 years.
But the squad was by any means good or deep enough to sustain a second run with more expectations and with the added pressure of having to deliver in CL as well.
Then DeLa sold Kim, replaced him with another semi-obscure player instead of strengthening the squad with players of a HIGHER caliber. And as if the lack of proper top-level signings wasn’t enough, Osimhen has been hampered by injuries and distracted by transfer rumours and off-the-pitch shenanigans that an actual Top Club would have nipped in the bud or avoided completely (I mean, the blunder by the social media manager was amateur hour stuff).
Then it also happened that most opponents got Kvara figured out. A poor run of form, an injury and the end of the “surprise effect” have turned last season’s breakthrough prospect into a known quantity who is struggling to be as devastating. And at times he started to remember Mr. Tiraggir’ Insigne, aka a one-trick pony who gets less useful the more he plays.
So yeah… Garcia isn’t Guardiola, but the squad is unbalanced AF, lacks quality in some areas and is probably already satisfied by last year’s triumph to have the same hunger for success and willingness to work as hard.
It happens a lot when the club, the players, the board and the fandom don’t have an established winning culture that resets goals and expectations every season.
In a way, it happened even to post-Treble Inter (a whole different level) when Mou left and Moratti kept all the Heroes, on a higher wage, instead of cashing out on those who still had market and bringing in younger and ambitious prospects or more established players with a chip on their shoulder. The fall was swift and spectatcular, no matter who was in the dugout.
It’s a matter of mentality, not of tactics.
Honestly i do not full understand why ADL choose to make a step backwards instead to make a step forward.
I have the feelings that everything was made to keep the team as the previous season but make it as the shadow of last year. Without a good coach, CB and manager is clear that is impossible for napoli to be at the same level as the previous year, also because the replacements taken are not at the same level of their predecesseor (atm, maybe in the future they could be good).
my doubt is why ADL seems to be falling from the clouds?
he has (not) worked to make the team at the same level as last year (and it was clear from the fact that during the summer both he and Garcia said that the goal is to qualify for the champions and not win the Scudetto again) so why instead of making the necessary interventions this summer is he doing it now?
why voluntarily choose to downgrade instead of trying to consecrate the current squad?
at this point he might as well have sold osimhen and kvara, now there’s even a risk of them losing value
P.S. im not a napoli supporter, so my questions are from an outsider view.
Because he’s an egomaniac AND a cheapskate!
Strengthening the squad in order to firmly establish it as a title challenger would have required a lot of money and a stable vision.
Neither of which are in his mind, as he doesn’t want to (can’t) spend insane money and he’s unable to let the manager work without interfering or putting his foot in his mouth on the media.
Selling Kvara or Osimhen would have been the smart option, but without a clear idea of who bring in to replace them it’d have been an even bigger risk and mistake.
Not every half known prospect will turn out great… So the ideal option would have been keeping them and IMPROVING the squad instead of weakening it and signing a bunch of backups.
I agree, Napoli had a good team last season, but two things happened at the same time: 1) they overperformed 2) the rivals sucked.
This kind of exploit can happen. The real challenge is to repeat it.