With overwhelming campaign, Napoli enchants Italy and all of Europe

With showy, beautiful and pleasurable football, whether in stadiums or on TV, a team from southern Italy has stood out this season and enchanted the country of Bota and the whole of Europe. It’s Napoli, known for the magical passage of Argentine Diego Maradona there in the 1980s and early 1990s, which has not given anyone a chance in the two main competitions it disputes: the Italian Championship and the European Champions League.

The national tournament has now reached its half. There were 19 rounds to complete the first round and the symbolic title of “winter champion” was left with Napoli. So far there are incredible 16 wins, two draws and only one loss. The team won the first two matches, drew the next two and amended a sequence of 11 straight victories, only stopping the setback against Internazionale by 1-0, in Milan, in the first game of 2023, after a break of almost two months for cause of the World Cup.

This defeat could be the harbinger of a drop in production, but none of that happened. Napoli managed three more consecutive victories to close the shift, including a resounding and historic 5-1 at Juventus, their biggest rival in the country, to the delight of the fans who filled the stadium now called Diego Maradona – tribute made after the death of the idol , in 2020 – on a Friday night. With the help of surprising stumbles from Milan and Internazionale, the Neapolitans are 12 points clear at the top.

“My obsession is to see the city explode with joy. We know what we’ve been doing on the pitch”, said coach Luciano Spalletti, who in his second season at the helm of the team has shown his offensive and daring style of play. Just to give you an idea of ​​what Napoli has done so far, they have already beaten some of their main rivals away from home in the fight for the “scudetto” – cases of Milan, Roma, Lazio and Atalanta.

Already in Europe, which lives the expectation of the start of the round of 16 of the Champions League, Napoli, who will face the German Eintracht Frankfurt, showed its strength in the group stage. He fell into a bracket considered complicated with Ajax and Liverpool ahead, in addition to the Scottish Rangers, and showed no fear. On the contrary, it left its rivals stunned. Right on his debut, he scored a 4-1 victory over the English at home. Then, 3-0 in Scotland and an undisputed 6-1 in Holland. He returned home and won again against Ajax and Rangers, to later secure the lead even with a defeat at the Anfield Road stadium, in Liverpool.

🔨 𝘝𝘐𝘊𝙏𝙃𝙊𝙍

💙 #Go Napoli forever pic.twitter.com/OAAngNIFo2

— Official SSC Napoli (@sscnapoli) January 22, 2023

the highlights

What impresses most in Napoli’s current phase is having done what it has done so far with a rebuilding team. At the end of last season, three of the main players of the team in recent years left: Senegalese defender Kalidou Koulibaly (to Chelsea), Belgian striker Dries Mertens (greatest scorer in the club’s history, who went to Turkey) and also striker, and Neapolitan by birth, Lorenzo Insigne (for FC Toronto, which plays in the MLS).

A good job of observation combined with an accurate trip to the market prevented Napoli from sportingly resent the farewell of their idols. The club signed little-known players such as strikers Raspadori and Giovanni Simeone (son of former midfielder and current coach Diego Simeone) and South Korean defender Min-jae Kim. And it hit a completely unknown Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, a 21-year-old Georgian left winger who had played in Russia and was with Dynamo Batumi, in his country. With disconcerting dribbling, assists and beautiful goals, he has already earned the nickname “Kvaradona”.

With them, Napoli has the best attack in the Italian Serie A, with 46 goals scored, and also has the best defense in the competition, with only 14 goals conceded. The top scorer in the league is another highlight of the team, which is already in its third season in Neapolitan lands: the Nigerian Victor Osimhen, with 13 goals.

And there’s more. So far, the club leads some important statistics of the Italian Championship: it is the team with the most goals applied (5); most wins (16); least defeats (1) and with the longest unbeaten streak (15). It is the team to be beaten in Italy, perhaps in Europe, nowadays.