Napoli have stormed the Champions League with THIRTEEN goals already
ALVISE CAGNAZZO: Napoli have stormed the Champions League with THIRTEEN goals and in Spalletti have the best Italian manager… so with a budget just one-eighth of Man City are the attack crazy Italian side on the cusp of a new Maradona era?
- Napoli are among the most in-form sides in Italy and the Champions League
- Luciano Spalletti’s side produced a stunning 6-1 victory at Ajax on Tuesday night
- Spalletti’s brand of exciting attacking football has seen his reputation grow
- He has molded together an excellent team playing with high confidence
- However, there are fears the winter World Cup could act as a momentum killer
Thirteen goals scored in just three Champions League games with a goal difference of plus-11. Napoli continued their dominating march through Europe on Tuesday night after coming from behind to hammer Ajax 6-1 at the Johan Cruyff Arena.
The Italian side had never won in Holland and decided to do so for the first time with a frenzied pace worthy of the best English clubs.
Walking and dancing on the Ajax rubble, whistled on by a passionate travelling fanbase, Napoli’s firework like displays are becoming must-see events while also making them one of Europe’s most toughest opponents.
Napoli stunned Ajax on Tuesday night following their 6-1 Champions League victory
The Serie A side came from behind to run riot at the Johan Cruyff Arena in Amsterdam
At times the Cruyff Arena sounded like there were about two million fans from Naples, which is the number of inhabitants of the city that has grown to love their ever improving side.
Naples is the city that never sleeps and this morning many fans went to work or school without much of it following their jaw dropping success at the Dutch champions.
After the four goals scored at Liverpool and the three at Rangers, Napoli scored another six in Holland to leave them well clear as top scorers at the halfway point of the group stage
In the Champions League this term they have scored 13 goals in just three group stage ties
Giacomo Raspadori has proven a instant hit after coming into the team on loan this season
It’s full marks for Luciano Spalletti’s team who continue to lead the group ahead of Liverpool proving they have great mental strength in facing top clubs away from the fortress of the Maradona stadium.
In every match, Napoli players give the impression of having fun while also entertaining. They offer champagne football, scoring an average of three goals every game, beating every statistical record in their history.
No Napoli fan would have wanted the Ajax match to end. It seemed like a modern fairy tale, a dream that seemed impossible at the kick-off after the Dutch team scored the opening goal in the ninth minute.
‘Cholito’ Simeone and Giacomo Raspadori look like two children entering an amusement park for the first time, scoring and running riot despite this being their first taste of the Champions League this season.
The Naples outfit have also dominated at home and currently top the Serie A table
Napoli’s fans have been left enchanted by the exploits of Luciano Spaletti’s Scugnizzi gang, demonstrating how with ideas and tactical intelligence a normal team can transform itself into a top side capable of dominating even among Europe’s elite.
Right now, Napoli are playing better than any other top European club despite having potentially lower level players and costs equal to just one eighth of Manchester City.
The Serie A side does not have full-blown top players but has managed to transform forward Khvicha Kvaratskhelia into a phenomenal player, re-introducing midfielder Stanislav Lobotka to great levels and rebuilding an aura of great security around the defence with left-back Mario Rui and goalkeeper Alex Meret.
Georgian star winger Kvaratskhelia is a bolt of lightning that turns the game on and off at will and is a throwback to former Manchester United star Andrei Kanchelskis in his strength and shooting.
Winger Khvicha Kvaratskhelia has been a key player behind Napoli’s attacking success
He shares similar attacking traits with former Manchester United star Andrei Kanchelskis
Captain Giovanni Di Lorenzo’s team is an accordion that plays with the most concrete and elastic 4-2-3-1 that can exist, perhaps even superior to that of the France team inspired by Zinedine Zidane in terms of efficiency and characteristics of the players.
Napoli are delivering football lessons that deserves attention with players able to make movements in spaces without the ball. They look like bishops on a chessboard and diagonally cut the field destroying every defence.
They are also able to react to in-game set-backs, such as falling behind in Amsterdam on Tuesday evening that forced them to chase and overturn the game with a ferocity and aggression masterminded through the great motivational work of Luciano Spalletti.
Angry, likeable, histrionic and deeply Tuscan in the way of living and interpreting football, Spalletti is an extraordinary figure who brings fans closer to the team.
Manager Luciano Spalletti is proving extremely popular with fans of the Italian outfit
In training and on the pitch he has the same tracksuit, he has a Tibetan rosary always with him as a necklace and uses a black pen like a Tuscan cigar between his fingers and between his lips when he’s nervous.
His way of living the matches is visceral, he is the twelfth man on the pitch and above all he has courage. White sneakers are a good luck charm and he has a curious way of fixing tufts of grass before making a substitution that is endearing.
Spalletti is against the stereotype of Italian sides being more defensively minded and is more akin to an approach on par with the great Holland sides of the 1970s and their famous brand of ‘Total football’ – led by Cruyff.
Napoli are also top of Serie A and in an unbeaten start have now won seven games in a row across all competitions. It doesn’t seem possible how Spalletti has always been snubbed by the top Italian clubs to build a serious and long-term project.
Napoli fans are delighted with their side’s excellent start to the season in all competitions
It is clear that Spalletti is more modern than more favourable names in the country such as Juventus boss Massimiliano Allegri, earning much less than him, but he has always had many problems in receiving chances at Juventus or Milan, except for the brief two-year spell at Inter that came to an end in 2019.
Napoli have shown Italy that it is not necessary to always defend but you can attack for 90 minutes. After Spalletti’s third goal he urged his players to continue playing without ever turning off. The victory against Ajax has thus become a popular manifesto of modern football that will most likely be studied in Italian football schools and at the technical center of Coverciano.
In Napoli fans are in love with Spalletti. A noisy bond has been created between the coach and the city that today seems very difficult to imagine him sitting on a different bench in the future.
Napoli is experiencing a second sporting youth and seems to have returned to the Diego Maradona era. There is an out-of-control enthusiasm in the city that could represent a problem in the long run.
There are hopes that the current side can now fight for honours like they did in the days of the legendary Diego Maradona
Right now the fans are living a collective dream and celebrating in the bars and making collective collections of money in the popular neighborhoods to follow the team in the next European away matches.
At the moment the greatest risk is that the stop of the World Cup in Qatar could halt the growth of the team as they steam through opponents at home and abroad.
The crazy idea of having the top world competition play in the middle of Serie A and all the leagues represents a big question and shows how numerous organisational problems exist for teams.
Napoli have many players who will participate in the World Cup and the hope is that the general physical conditions will be sufficient to complete the race towards the Scudetto when they return.
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