Talking about a championship sentenced when the equator of the season has barely been crossed is risky.
However, Napoli's meteoric march in Serie A does not give their pursuers much hope.
Since the departure of
Diego Armando Maradona
, more than three decades ago, the team from the Campania region has
never been so well outlined as these days to win the title in Italy
.
And meanwhile, this Tower of Babel built by the veteran
Luciano Spalletti
with soccer players of
17 nationalities
is also still competing in the Champions League.
The win this Sunday at the home of Spezia (3-0) allowed the Neapolitan team to maintain, with 21 disputed dates, the 13-point advantage over Inter, their escort, who with a goal from Lautaro Martínez stayed with the Derby della Madonnina against Milan.
This difference is
the largest built by a leader in the five major European leagues
and the second most comfortable in the 42 tournaments that are being played in the Old Continent, only surpassed by the
14 units
that Young Boys takes to Saint Gallen in Switzerland .
.
Eighteen victories, two draws and one defeat placed the team with the highest scorer (51) and the one with the least beaten fence (15) of the 20 participating in Serie A in this privileged situation. Of their last 17 matches in the domestic tournament , emerged victorious in 16. He only stumbled against Inter at the Giuseppe Meazza on January 4, in the first game he played after the break imposed by the World Cup in Qatar.
This solid run was replicated in the Champions League, in which they won zone A, which they shared with Liverpool, Ajax and Rangers.
It was the highest scoring team (it scored 20) among the 32 that participated in the group stage.
Needless to say, among them were superpowers like Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Manchester City or Paris Saint-Germain.
On February 21, they will face Eintracht Frankfurt in Germany for the first leg of one of the matches of the round of 16.
Luciano Spalletti, the architect of Serie A leading Napoli. Photo: Alessandro Garofalo/LaPresse via AP.
In this brilliant season, the only blemish, so far, was the elimination in the round of 16 of the Italian Cup: 15 days ago he was surprised by the modest
Cremonese
(bottom side in Serie A and the only team that has not yet won in the tournament), who defeated him on penalties at the Diego Maradona after drawing 2-2.
Unlike what happens more and more frequently in European football,
the key to success does not seem to lie in the wallet
.
Although the leadership headed by film producer
Aurelio De Laurentiis
has spared no resources since 2004, when he took over a bankrupt club that played in Serie C1, he was never able to compete in that area with Juventus and Inter.
And, much less, with the English giants, Real Madrid or PSG.
For his second season in charge of the team, Spalletti had to face a reconstruction after the departure of some men who had been fundamental in recent years: the captain and emblem
Lorenzo Insigne
(he chose to go to Toronto FC in Major League Soccer), the Belgian
Dries Mertens
(top scorer in the club's history, with 148 goals in 397 games over nine seasons), Senegalese
Kalidou Koulibaly
(Chelsea paid 40 million euros for him), Spanish
Fabián Ruiz
(Paris Saint-Germain took him) and Colombian goalkeeper
David Ospina
.
Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Napoli's great success in the last summer transfer market.
Photo: Ciro De Luca / Reuters.
For this reconstruction, De Laurentiis, Spalletti and sports director Cristiano Giuntoli had a clinical eye.
The most powerful success, for what he has shown in this first half of the campaign, was the Georgian
Khvicha Kvaratskhelia
, a footballer unknown to the general public until the middle of last year and who has dazzled in these months: he has 10 goals and 14 assists in 22 matches between Serie A and the Champions League.
And the fans call him Kvaradona, an obvious allusion to the best footballer of all time
.
After two and a half seasons at Rubin Kazan, the 21-year-old left winger parted ways with the Russian club in March last year, a few days after the start of the war in Ukraine.
The DT of the Georgian national team, the French Willy Sagnol, contacted colleagues and leaders of European clubs to offer it.
They all turned him down
, so Kvaratskhelia ended up signing with Dinamo Batumi from his country.
In July,
Napoli bought him for €14.8 million
.
Today several very large teams are looking at him and his representative, Christian Emile, assures that by mid-year he will be worth
100 million
.
Kim Min-jae, pillar in the defense of Napoli.
Photo: Ciro Fusco / EFE / EPA.
The other great success was to pay Turkish Fenerbahçe the 20 million euros set in the termination clause of
Kim Min-jae
's contract .
The defender of the South Korean national team (with whom he played in the World Cup in Qatar) arrived to cover the gap left by Koulibaly's departure and today forms a granite central defense with the Kosovar
Amir Rrahmani
.
In September he was chosen as the best player of the month in Serie A by the organization of the tournament.
Kvaratskhelia and Kim fit perfectly into a structure that was still supported by captain
Giovanni Di
Lorenzo (player for the team led by Roberto Mancini and Euro 2021 champion),
André Frank Zambo Anguissa from
Cameroon ,
Piotr Zielinski
from Poland and the striker Nigerian
Victor Osimhen
, top scorer of the tournament in progress (he has 16).
And they also joined footballers who, without being starters, are making a good contribution this season, such as the Frenchman
Tanguy Ndombélé
(arrived on loan from Tottenham) and the striker
Giacomo
Raspadori (on loan from Sassuolo).
Among those men who joined last summer and who are making a strong contribution to the Neapolitan team is
Giovanni Simeone
, who earned this opportunity after having signed the best of his six seasons in Italy: he scored 17 goals with the Hellas Verona shirt and he was the fourth highest scorer in the league behind Ciro Immobile (27), Dusan Vlahovic (24) and Lautaro Martínez (21).
The change was drastic: the striker went from being the undisputed starter in a team whose objective was to remain in the top flight to waiting for his chance on the bench of a team that aspires to win the Scudetto and competes in Europe.
Gio assimilated it very well
: he has eight goals (three for Serie A, four for the Champions League and one for the Coppa Italia) in just 525 minutes of work.
Some of them were decisive, like the one last Sunday or the one that was worth a victory against the champion Milan at the Giuseppe Meazza in September.
Simeone is one of four Americans (the others are the Brazilian
Juan Jesus
, the Uruguayan
Mathías Olivera
and the Mexican
Hirving Lozano
) in a 26-member squad in which
eight Italians
live with teammates from 16 nations: there are also representatives from
Germany, France, Portugal, Poland, Norway, Slovakia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Georgia, Nigeria, Cameroon and South Korea
.
On Sunday, against Rome, the only starters born on the peninsula were goalkeeper Alex Meret and captain Di Lorenzo.
With this collection of passports on his payroll, Napoli is on the hunt for a crown that he only got twice, both guided by the magic of Diego Maradona (in 1987 and 1990), in an
oligopolistic league
that in its last 20 seasons distributed the titles between
Juventus
(11),
Inter
(6) and
Milan
(3).
In the last decade, they have been runner-up four times (in the 2012/13, 2015/16, 2017/18 and 2018/19 seasons), but have always ended up relegated by Juve.
This time he seems to have the trophy within reach, although there are still 17 dates to go.
look also
Lautaro Martínez is still 'on fire' at Inter: he converted Milan again to win the classic and chase Napoli
Juventus celebrated in the Italian Cup but suffers at the desk: they could deduct another 20 points and they would be last in Serie A