Napoli win the 'Scudetto' 33 years after the last of the two that Maradona raised

History makes teams great, but it is also capable of jibarizing clubs that failed to pay it off on time.

Napoli, a football legend, a cyclothymic club by nature and the pride of southern Italy in the face of the industrial arrogance of the north, was sentenced 33 years and three days to that cruel fate.

More than three decades had passed since a short and genius Argentine led the club to the second

consecutive

in an unparalleled chapter of its history.

But, since then, there have only been problems, crises, defeats and a bankruptcy that was about to bury him forever.

It was like that until 2004, when it was bought by the film producer Aurelio de Laurentiis, changing the fate of a club trapped by its past and ending this Thursday turning the page of a story written in blood by Diego Armando Maradona, unofficial patron of the city, with permission of San Gennaro.

Naples, faithful to the migrant nature of its citizens, has ended up lifting the title 900 kilometers from Vesuvius.

The misstep of the weekend forced him to travel to the north of the country on a Thursday night to achieve what they had waited decades for at home.

The team, in a fit of Neapolitanism, had wasted their first

with Salernitana last Sunday.

A day in which the entire city, from the alleyways of Forcella and Quartieri Spagnoli to the elegant pedestrian streets of Chiaia, adored the television to cheer and pray to the saint of arithmetic, one more than the 56 that the city had before the Counter-reformation

It was too perfect.

In the 84th minute, after carrying the weight of the game and the result, Salernitana tied and postponed the party of the century.

As if the blood of San Gennaro, this time, had not liquefied and it was necessary to ask him for a time for the match played this Thursday against Udinese, where 15,000 Neapolitan fans attended.

Osimhen's goal that was worth the tie (1-1) and the title unleashed the frenzy.

A goal for history.

👏👏👏 Osimhen gives Napoli the title.

#LaCasadelFútbol #SerieA pic.twitter.com/9vq2cx5Law

— Soccer on Movistar Plus+ (@MovistarFutbol) May 4, 2023

The feat of Naples was built by breaking stone.

But also based on small dreams day by day.

It was full of bankruptcies, especially in the band, with a Georgian prodigy whose unpronounceable name –Khvicha Kvaratskhelia– does not even fit in the shirts that sold out this week on the streets: the good ones and the stick ones that were sold on every corner.

The last chapter of the feat was written with the victory against Juventus in their field the week before.

Spalletti's team, an extraordinary coach who lost part of his prestige in the unsuccessful adventure with Roma, where he had to retire the idol Totti and become the villain of that story forever, has not dropped from first position since the beginning of the championship.

Naples also enters the select club of teams that won the

five games before the end of the league, a mark that reflects a superiority with several parents.

But the management of De Laurentiis has been key.

Advised by his sports director, Cristiano Giuntoli, he managed to hit the moment when he had to sell to stars.

Legends such as Insigne, Mertens or Koulibaly left without the approval of the fans.

And they were replaced, that was the good news, by totally unknown prodigies such as Nigerian Victor Osimhen (from Lille), Georgian winger extraordinaire Khvicha Kvaratskhelia (signed from Dinamo Batumi), or the robust Korean center-back Kim Min-jae (from Fenerbahçe ).

The tournament had been decided for a long time.

But no one dared to celebrate or even mention it.

Until the last chapter of the feat, written with the victory against Juventus in their field two days ago.

that had lasted for ten days was considered finished, while the shopkeepers of Quarteri Spagnoli and the vendors of cribs on Via San Gregorio Armeno smiled knowingly when asked what the city was about to experience

33

years later.

Silence, and that's what this city knows for a while, had prevailed this time without threats.

At that point, one could only entrust oneself to the song by singer-songwriter Pino Daniele, a Neapolitan totem: “

”.

Naples, with the exception of Cologne, is the only European city with more than a million inhabitants that does not divide its love into more than one team.

The derby, recounted Angelo Caretonuto, has been the only fratricidal calamity that heaven has spared its neighbors, who even discussed these days between neighborhoods to determine who was the better fan.

The passion of the tifosi -and patience- has been this time comparable to the superiority of the club in the tournament.

Also this Thursday.

"Today Yes.

It's over.

We have waited too long, ”announced Marcello Trotta, a Napoli fan an hour before the result proved him right in the square of the popular Sanità neighborhood.

On the Toledo road, a hearse made its way with a coffin inside.

What a day to die.

The victory of Naples is unappealable.

But it is also true that they have not had great rivals in Italy this year.

Juve was completely broken.

Even more, after the sanction of 15 points that the Italian Federation imposed on him for an alleged accounting fraud (later he recovered them).

But the rest of the teams did not give their best version this season either.

Lazio, the second classified, was this Wednesday before playing the game against Sassuolo at 18 points.

And Inter, champion of the

the previous year, at 24 (it is the seventh classified).

Naples could sometimes be another province of Argentina, also in terms of football.

At least since in 1984 Barcelona decided to sell the club then chaired by the engineer – and old fox – Corrado Ferlaino to a genius who was unable to dominate.

Last December, when Argentina managed to lift its third World Cup in Qatar and also lose its fear of the ghosts of its history, the city launched a dress rehearsal of what this moment would mean.

After all, the guest of honor was going to be the same: Diego Armando Maradona.

On May 11, 1987, the day after the first

lifted by Napoli, the

placed a banner in the Poggioreale cemetery that read: "You don't know what you've missed."

On Thursday at 10:30 p.m., 34 years later, the city finally paid the bill to that past.

The final whistle in cold Udine unleashed chaos so that the seismograph that deciphers the mood of Vesuvius recorded the most similar to an eruption that the city has experienced in recent decades.

“

” (We start with three), read the title of the film by Massimo Troisi, interpreted almost all the time in Neapolitan dialect and turned into the street refrain of this

.

Just, also, what the team can do now with its convoluted history.

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