Napoli needs an obsessed man like Spalletti. There is only one: Antonio Conte
Many Napoli fans didn’t like the Scudetto film, I’ll be with you.
It is partly acceptable: a somewhat saccharine rhetoric about the protagonist city – even when the ripples between fans and clubs were more complex and knotted -, a rush of nostalgia and regret that can frankly be saved on the elimination from the Champions League.
However, it is a film that managed to highlight an aspect that perhaps De Laurentiis doesn’t even like that much: it was Luciano Spalletti’s championship. Not only of his tactical innovations, of a game of positions but above all of relationships at the forefront of Europe, of the 4-3-3 and of the territorial domination against superior opponents such as Liverpool and Inter.
It was the championship, I correct myself, of Luciano Spalletti’s obsession with victory, of the Calvinist sacrifice of the sofa bed bought to sleep in Castel Volturno. Sometimes Spalletti was against everyone: club, players, environment. Against their understandable mid-season enthusiasm and against the summer depression due to the Senators’ departures.
Spalletti asks the fan who criticizes Dimaro to keep quiet, because he begins to suspect that the players already purchased – until then Olivera and Kvaratskhelia – and those in the home stretch – Kim and Raspadori – would have raised the quality of the squad. Spalletti who at the Scudetto celebration said to Ciro Ferrara, to Dazn: «I came to Naples after Sarri, after Ancelotti, to do what? To win the scudetto, otherwise everyone would jump on me.” Spalletti remains alone at the training center in the evening to study his opponents. Because it’s with the details that you win.
In short, Spalletti showed us what a coach must do to be successful in Naples: lead a monastic life aimed at inculcating the objective of the result, which otherwise ends up getting lost in vanity and discouragement. It has also happened other times in the history of the Azzurri, with Ottavio Bianchi and Maurizio Sarri, for example. Coaches who, with different profiles and outcomes, have filled the cultural gaps – we are talking about sporting culture, or, rather, the culture of victory – with the rigidity of their ideas of managing the locker room and the pitch. Even towards De Laurentiis, as always in the Scudetto film Spalletti does when he reveals that the president called him before Verona-Napoli.
A coach, in this city, is not just a coach. As Mourinho also said after his dismissal in Rome, there is also work to be done off the pitch.
For this there is no other way, the good Luciano would say. De Laurentiis must hurry: the only man obsessed with victory that he can achieve is Antonio Conte, detested in the city for years for his Juventus style but a winning coach. The only one who would give organization, hunger, and above all the desire to win to a group that now needs to be refounded. Without guidance it can be said that they have become demotivated. Not all athletes have a certain type of mind. As Leao said recently, the difference between strong players and champions like Cristiano Ronaldo or Ibrahimovic is the mentality, not the talent.
