When it comes to Napoli’s ability to end a 28-year wait for the Scudetto, it’s fair to say one or two seeds of doubt have been planted over the last month. Psychologically speaking, the last week in particular has come as quite a blow. Napoli’s unbeaten record in Serie A finally ended and to the worst possible opponent too.
To lose at home to Juventus, the team whose crown you so desire, can’t have been easy to take. Napoli not only lost the game, they lost top spot too. Inter seized the opportunity presented and, to make matters worse, Lorenzo Insigne also got injured.
Three days later, Napoli exited the Champions League at the group stage. Eliminated from the competition earlier than last year, it was a backward step and left a bitter taste in the mouth considering all the effort put into the play-off in August. At the weekend, a 0-0 draw with Fiorentina meant Napoli missed out on another golden opportunity. They could have reclaimed pole position in light of the stalemate played out by Juventus and Inter in Saturday night’s Derby d’Italia and immediately recovered the ground they lost a week ago. Alas, it didn't happen for them.
This is the lowest point of the season for Napoli. Trust in their title credentials has been shaken, which seems a little odd when you look at the table. They have hardly lost touch with their rivals. A point is all that separates them from Inter and, unlike Juve, who play Roma before Christmas, Napoli won’t face another member of the top five until mid-February.
You can understand, then, why Maurizio Sarri bristled at the idea Napoli are now in crisis and maybe aren’t as good as we thought they were. “Maybe I’ve turned into an imbecile and [Dries] Mertens is now rubbish,” he said sarcastically, “but we’ve picked up 206 points in 91 games, an average of 2.27 per game. Crisis? What crisis?”
While obviously a bitter pill to swallow, the Juventus loss was Napoli’s first in Serie A since February 25 - an unbeaten run stretching 26 games. Up until then, they were on course to establish a new record points total, beating the 102 Antonio Conte accumulated in his final season on the arm of the Old Lady. It seems a long time ago now, but Napoli were perfect for the first nine matches of the season. They fell just a game short of equalling what Roma did in 2013 back when Rudi Garcia was putting “the church back in the centre of the village” with 10 straight wins at the start of the campaign. The reasons to believe were plenty.
Napoli delivered in the big games, twice going to the capital and disposing of Roma and Lazio with ominous intent. Milan caused them fewer problems than were anticipated in the summer. And the first team to stop them was Inter, who mounted the barricades and held out for a 0-0 at the San Paolo just as they would later do at the Juventus Stadium.
We were seeing a different side to Napoli. Going behind didn’t seem to faze them. Atalanta, SPAL, Genoa and Lazio all took the lead against the Partenopei and still lost. It was testament to the character in Napoli’s team and their supreme confidence. They won ugly too, convincing us that this team didn’t always need to be beautiful to bring the points home.
Now, more than ever, we mustn’t forget the strength of the case Napoli were putting forward as the most credible threat to Juventus’ hegemony in Serie A in the last six years. We should also maybe have taken Sarri a little more seriously when he warned that Napoli and the other teams in the conversation for the title, Juventus aside, couldn’t possibly sustain how prolific they were in terms of points. Tiredness is now beginning to set in. A toll is being taken. Last weekend was the first time Juventus, Napoli, Roma, Inter and Lazio all failed to win on the same matchday since spring 2010.
Fatigue hit Napoli first, which is to be expected. Teams that start the season early with a Champions League or Europa League play-off always pay for it in November and that’s exactly what’s happened here. At the moment, Mertens looks a shadow of himself. Without a goal in five league games, the mind goes back to Napoli’s defeat in Kharkiv in September, when Sarri was asked to explain why the Belgian did not start, especially seeing as they were only playing Benevento at the weekend. “He’s an extraordinary player, but he has to be fresh,” Sarri said, “he can’t play 45 games a season.”
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Sarri had the luxury of alternating Mertens with Arkadiusz Milik then. He doesn’t now. Milik’s second big knee injury has exposed Napoli’s short bench. This time last year Sarri could have turned to Manolo Gabbiadini in order to give Mertens a bit of a breather. Now there’s no one. Leonardo Pavoletti hardly got any game time in the second half of last season. Duvan Zapata didn’t see enough opportunity for him to justify sticking around in the summer either. And it’s here that we get to the nub of the argument. Should Sarri have rotated more, or does blame lie with the club for not doing enough in the summer to make Napoli’s squad depth less shallow?
The case for Sarri’s defence is Mertens, Insigne and Jose Callejon always want to play. They kick up a fuss otherwise. As for owner Aurelio de Laurentiis, sure Napoli weren’t seen to do much in the transfer window, but he’d say Napoli's big signings were Mertens and Insigne, who secured considerable pay rises to stay put. The compromises manager and club have made go some way to explaining the situation they’re in.
Returning to Mertens for a moment, Napoli’s issues are more complex than something as simple as the loss of form of their most prolific goalscorer. A cluster of factors have coincided to slow them down. In addition to starting the season early, a lack of depth and the accumulated tiredness, injuries to Faouzi Ghoulam and Insigne have diminished Napoli. Ghoulam is one of the best left-backs in the world. Super-agent Jorge Mendes recently added him to his client list. The Algerian is a key component of Napoli’s play because of his understanding with Marek Hamsik and Lorenzo il Magnifico.
His ability to cover the entire length of the pitch and get to the byline allows Insigne to come inside and play those killer combinations with Mertens that opponents have nightmares about. Mario Rui, for all his knowledge of Sarri’s system, can’t replicate the same dynamic. Napoli have failed to score from open play in four of the five games Ghoulam has been out.
And if Insigne misses him, Callejon suffers without Insigne. How many times over the years have we seen the Napoli No.10 spot Callejon making a run between full-back and centre-back and score from the resulting pass? It’s a Napoli trademark. The spotlight has almost exclusively fallen on Mertens not scoring in the league since the end of October, but it’s also worth mentioning Callejon has found the net just once in his last nine appearances.
Hamsik has also been out of sorts all season. A goal short of matching Diego Maradona’s club record, he seems to be playing with a mental block at the moment.
You’d never have thought it, but scoring goals - something that used to come so easily to Napoli - is now unexpectedly hard. Napoli scored three or more times in nine of their first 11 games. In the last five, though, they haven’t managed it once. The silver lining is all the clean sheets the backline continues to keep. Too often that's been lost in all the criticism of Sarri’s rotation and concern with the attack.
What Napoli need right now more than anything is a rest. Batteries could do with recharging. How unfortunate, then, that this is the year Serie A decided to play between Christmas and New Year. The winter break is now a fortnight in January, starting after the Epiphany.
Before then Napoli must play five games, some of them tricky, like the ones away to Torino and at home to Samp, others less so. A mini-season is about to start, the objective of which is simple: stay attached to the top going into the holidays, then get some R&R and go shopping. Do that and anyone currently writing off Napoli will look very foolish indeed.
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