At the Mapei Stadium - Cittá del Tricolore, Sassuolo is local.
But not this time.
It's Friday and the visiting gallery is packed with 10,000 Neapolitans.
They seem more.
They scream like more.
There are plenty of light blue shirts, flags of a thousand sizes with one face -Diego Maradona's- and/or with a number, ten
.
The popularity of the southern Italian team is known, but this campaign seems like a magical vindication, a tribute.
Mariano Di Fiore is an Argentinian, accountant and inveterate traveler.
He anchored in Naples a couple of months ago.
He portrays: "If you come, you don't want to leave anymore, it's impressive. If you're Argentine, they tell you and it makes you feel Neapolitan, they invite you to eat, we're talking about Diego. And it's no joke: they think they're playing with twelve this
season
. Remember that 10 was taken off the payroll. It's for them. And if you go to the stadium, you believe it too."
Alejandro Verón, one of the founders of the Maradonian Church, tells Clarín:
"How can you not believe? With so many miracles he did while he was here
. "
On the field of play, Napoli beat Sassuolo 2-0 and
celebrate their twentieth victory in 23 dates
.
The other three games: two draws and one defeat (0-1 against Inter, at the Meazza).
And at the Diego Maradona stadium, which used to bear the name of another city saint, San Paolo, only one team managed to salvage points (Lecce, 1-1).
He is a comfortable leader, after this date he has 15 points over his guard Inter.
It is clarified: the scene is told in the present tense.
Because that's how you live in Naples: day by day, second by second.
Two cracks played for the magic hand
Napoli have two of the best-performing and fastest-growing footballers of the season:
The first is
Victor Osimhen
, 24 years old, born in Lagos, the former capital of Nigeria and the most populous city in the African country.
In 2015, he was the Under 17 world champion. He soon started his campaign in Europe: Wolfsburg, Belgian Charleroi, Lille and since mid-2020, he has played for Napoli.
He wears the number 9 jersey. Until this season he had performed acceptably, at times notable.
But in this campaign it seems that he touched one more wand or, who knows, a magic hand: he has accumulated 18 goals in 19 appearances in Serie
A.
He is the team's and tournament's top scorer (followed by Lautaro Martínez, with 13 goals).
Against Sassuolo he scored a maradonian goal.
Come and see...
The perfect partner is the latest jewel from Eastern Europe.
It is about Georgian Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, but everyone knows it and calls it as Kvara or Vara.
He was born in Tbilisi, the capital of his country, a former Soviet Republic, and turned 22 on February 12.
In 2017 he was already playing in the First Division, for Dinamo Tbilisi, the most important team in Georgia.
He then moved to Rustavi, made the jump to football in the Russian Federation (he played for Lokomotiv Moscow and Rubin Kazan).
He did not do well and he returned home to play for Dinamo Batumi.
Last year he bought it Napoli.
And as in the case of Osimhen a magic wand or hand touched him.
He plays as a winger, but scores as a center forward.
He adds 10 goals (for the first time in his career in a season) and 9 assists (he is the leader of the category in Serie A).
Sometimes he seems unstoppable.
Like against Sassuolo.
He also scored a Maradona goal.
Come and see...
Spalletti, an enemy of the catenaccio loose in Italy
Luciano Spalletti is 63 years old and is an open book on
calcium
.
He has spent three decades as a coach, after leaving behind his 263 games as a midfielder for minor teams.
His first club was Empoli, which was in Serie C. In two seasons he took him to Serie A
and there he kept it with a decent 12th place.
Then, between 1998 and 2002, there was a period of ups and downs without great results: he went through Sampdoria, Udinese, Venezia and Ancona.
The first leap in quality was made in his second cycle at the Friuli club (a curiosity: his stadium is in front of Piazza Argentina).
There
he transformed a team that celebrated being saved from relegation (the
salvezza
, as they call it) to compete in Europe
.
Luciano Spalletti, in action.
He is going for all the glory with Napoli.
(EFE)
In 2005 he arrived at Roma, won three titles (two Italian Cups and one Italian Super Cup) and was runner-up three times in a row in the fight for the
Scudetto
.
In 2010, he left Italy for the first time.
He went to manage Zenit St. Petersburg.
He was champion of the Russian League in the first two seasons;
in the third he came second.
He also won the Russian Cup and the Super Cup.
Always protagonist.
In 2015 he returned to Rome.
Two seasons: second and third, both with a pass to the Champions League.
In 2017 he arrived at Inter.
Two seasons: he finished fourth in both and qualified the Milan team for the Champions League.
But Spalletti is not only certain to fight for the top positions or to qualify for Europe.
It's more than that: he is an emblem of traditional Italian football.
He plays to attack, to break for offensive power.
Addio catenaccio
.
But this man born Certaldo, on the outskirts of Florence, in full Tuscany, found his place in the world -it seems- a little further south.
In Naples.
He arrived last season, finished third, qualified for the current Champions League in which he faces Eintracht Frankfurt in the round of 16 (in the first leg, in Germany, he won 2-0).
And in the current Serie A he does not stop building records.
Luciano is already incorporated into the dizzying and passionate Neapolitan dynamic.
Serves a recent answer, accompanied by a smile that did not fit on his face: "The fans? It is essential that each of us do our part: the players are attentive, with one ear to the encouragement of the public and with the other
to my instructions
."
Naples in its purest form.
And now, what's next?
In the 1986/87 season, that of the first Scudetto in the history of Napoli, on the day of the largest popular demonstration in the city, a flag was hung at the gate of the cemetery: "E non sanno che se
só perso"
.
They don't know what they missed.
The unforgettable Eduardo Galeano wrote about this detail:
"On May 10, 1987, Club Nápoles became Italian champion for the first time in 60 years. The city was avenged by the arts of a short and curly magician named Maradona, who It made the ball sing, and a party earthquake exploded and sent people who had a fucking habit of losing at soccer and everything else dancing through the air.
At the end of that night, a huge poster appeared in the Naples cemetery. He was not going to the street, but to the graves. The sign read: 'You don't know what you've been missing!'"
The image of the Naples cemetery, in 1987. "They don't know what they missed."
(Twitter: @signoriniok)
Now nobody wants to miss the third.
The second was far away, back in 1990: just before the World Cup and just after Juventus beat Juventus 5-1 to win the Italian Super Cup, Diego's last title in the city to which "he restored his self-esteem", as they
say
. who carry out the free chair "The hero and the city" at the University of Naples.
The Napoli players, playing to look at the Scudetto that is approaching.
(@sscnapoliES)
And there lies the glory.
15 dates left.
There are 15 points ahead (62 to 47) over Inter and 18 over Milan.
Juventus - "the rival to always beat", as Diego said - is tenth at 33 points due to the 15 units that were taken away for "cheating" in the transfer market
.
It seems so close that it seems unbelievable.
But if the Neapolitans are convinced that they play with twelve...
look also
Diego Maradona and Naples: magical details of a perpetual idyll
Diego Maradona returns to the pitch where he scored a better goal than England's in 1986
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