Napoli does not sell his 9 in January.

If they don’t find an agreement to extend the contract for at least 1 year, it is extremely probable that he’ll leave during the summer window. The club will surely ask above 100m.

Napoli doesn’t have any financial problems but there are several contracts expiring in 1 year so there will be many factors that they’re going to evaluate (including what the next manager is going to ask for)

It’s funny how many sport journalists feel compelled to open their pieces with some standard rhetorical BS like: “Juventus hosting Inter was supposed to be a delight for the senses, but boredom reigned supreme”.

Nobody in their right mindset would have gone to the match with high expectations. A defensive manager with no strategy on attack* Vs a reaction manager who has his best matches when he can prepare a counter-strategy.

And she clearly knows all that: “Allegri, the most divisive of coaches in Italy, is the doyen of pragmatic football. Aware of his team’s lack of ability on the ball, he has created a side that collects as many small wins on the pitch as possible to secure a result. His side won’t dazzle - a third of their chances are from set-pieces. Juventus rarely take the game by the scruff of the neck or show any intensity in forging their way ahead. They simply wait, biding their time, lulling the opponent into a snooze before they find the right time to bite. Goal.”

*Allegri often said “the manager has to work on the defense, while the attack is something players with their talent must take care of”.

A bit long…

First of all, people’s rants are not relevant. People have been unhappy with the signing of Sarri, Spalletti and so on.

When Sarri struggled at the beginning, people wanted him out. He didn’t win but those seasons are still in the heart and eyes of every Napoli fan.

When Spalletti lost against Empoli (from 2-0 to 2-3 in 10 minutes) in his first season, a lot of people wanted him out. We know what happened next.

Often there’s no correlation between rants and reality.

The big problem with this season is that ADL underestimated the impact of the manager on this team. He thought that having won with such a big margin, we could set autopilot and land on another great season.

So when Spalletti (and Giuntoli) left in the summer and ADL had to look for a replacement he tried with some high profile manager but didn’t succeed (we have to consider that ADL makes extremely intricate contracts with many clauses that he uses to maximize the control he can have on the player or manager he is hiring, but this can lead to some issues with higher profiles). At this point he tried some secondary profile and here comes the trouble.

If you have listened to the pre-season interviews there was something off since the beginning because the impression was that he was really trying too hard to convince everyone (maybe including himself) that Garcia was the right choice. I had never seen a presentation of a new manager in the Capodimonte museum before and now that I think about it I should have known.

Everything was meaningless. ADL continued to refer to 433 as if any manager playing with 433 will do the same stuff. He wanted to go on the footprint of Spalletti’s tactics and since then there’s been a lot of problems on the communication layer. Every time some journalist asked about last season it looked like Garcia had not watched any match or studied last season tactics because he clearly has his pride to preserve and doesn’t want to be just a Spalletti’s copycat (or cosplayer 😂).

And I think there’s another problem also with the sporting director Meluso. He’s a good guy and I don’t have proof that he’s not the right guy (yet) but he seems a bit too soft to be able to counter the oppressive figure of ADL.

Sebastiano Rossi was a good goalkeeper but not an incredible one. He just had the best defense in the world and got the longest streak of clean sheets in Serie A (900+ minutes with no goals conceded). That lasted 22 years, then Buffon and Juve happened.

Those are the most useless stats to compare goalkeepers and infact it’s from Gazzetta dello Sport… If you don’t know the shot/goals ratio and what kind of shots were they supposed to stop you just can’t compare them.