During ‘Campania Sport’ on Canale 21, the journalist Umberto Chiariello intervened with his usual editorial: “I would like to tell you a story, in which we find the fundamental teachings of football. Today there are staff, match analysts and various trainers who once weren’t there, there was only the coach who did everything. The episode I want to tell you dates back to after the World Cup in Spain, with the season opening with the Juventus of Zoff, Rossi, Tardelli, Platini and Boniek as the overwhelming favorites. The season started with Juventus, who were reigning Italian champions, after the hangovers of the ’82 World Cup in front of the most terrible and worst manager in football memory, Boniperti. Three world champions refused to sign. Gentile, Tardelli and Paolo Rossi did not want to accept the figures proposed by the club and asked for 30% more. Something that caused a sensation. Boniperti exposed them to public ridicule, put them out of the team in the pre-season friendly match in Vilar Perosa, causing the Juventus fans to call them mercenaries. They were forced to go before Boniperti to sign a compromise. That year the super favorites Juve didn’t win anything. In the Champions Cup final they were defeated by Magath and in the championship Roma of Falcao and Pruzzo won. In these days we are celebrating the Grande Torino and the disgrace of Superga, that team is the last to have won multiple championships in a row (4 consecutive). From then on Bologna, Fiorentina, Lazio, Rome, Verona, Sampdoria, Turin? No one won the championship again, in fact the first one was the cause of the subsequent troubles because everyone went and asked for more money. They were teams that made an exploit but were not equipped as an environment, as a club and as players to win.
This year’s Napoli is in good shape, they just did worse. Only Tabarez managed to do worse with Milan than Napoli. He had a catastrophic year, because the first to have the hangover from success was the president. Which on the day of the celebration paradoxically announces his end. But I don’t give it finished for the future, saying that it’s boiled now I’ll send it back to the sender, let’s see if it comes back. It can already be said that Napoli is certainly downsizing, as happened two years ago and then won the Scudetto. It was easy to shout: ‘I told you we wouldn’t repeat ourselves’, but there are few crazy people like me who believed in a cycle. I believed that this team could open a cycle, because it had a 24-year-old center forward, a playmaker, the strongest in the league, 22 years old, who was young overall, who had won by separation and with good and careful management could continue to win. De Laurentiis thought so, I thought so too and today I am the subject of a full-blown shit storm. Having said that, I also wrote this summer: against history to make history. No one had won two years in a row, but we won by distance and we can open a cycle. Kim is missing, but who knows if they caught the lobster from the toilet this time too, no this year it won’t happen. The funny thing is that now De Laurentiis also says it, after the evening of the party he didn’t know that he had announced his own end because he says: ‘We will win, we will win and we will win again’, he turns towards Giuntoli: ‘Are you ready to build a great Naples?’ and Giuntoli backs down. Giuntoli had decided to leave, it was also right because he had completed his journey, Juventus had him as a professional upgrave. But De Laurentiis didn’t expect it, just as he didn’t expect the firm no from Spalletti, who was convinced he would be able to convince him even if he knew that Spalletti had no intention of continuing. He trusted too much in himself. Today he is saying: ‘Only deluded people can think of winning two years in a row’. He is the real president, but you and I are deluded. It’s true what he says about Manchester United fans, in recent years the Neapolitan fans have lost heart. Second place is no longer good, but now people have forgotten that he won. The story came out that we won the championship because the stars aligned and it was pure chance. They are all false narratives, but I believe that beyond the extemporaneous words of the president, that at times he says he was wrong while at others he does not show this conviction. But I know he knows he was wrong. Let’s see if Napoli will be able to recover from their mistakes.
I’m not passionate about the coaches’ purse, no one has signed for Napoli. Today Pioli is in the lead, tomorrow Gasperini, the day after tomorrow Italian, then Conte returns. Nobody has signed for Napoli, this is the only certainty I have. I know they signed a sporting director in March and he is already working hard for Napoli. At the end of May we will know who the coach will be, a fundamental piece for building the future. Only the field will tell who will be the right one. The field is one thing, the paper is another.”
