Naples, lovely remains
Spalletti’s scream in Massa when the time is up – “Bastaaa !, Bastaaa!” – a rash of suffering and anxiety. Those of a Napoli to which the Var (Giroud’s active offside, here we go again) had just returned the victory at San Siro and which was closing with Malcuit on the right, Rrahmani (the best in the field) and Juan Jesus in the middle and Ghoulam in support to Di Lorenzo. The lovable remains. The least probable Napoli of the year, an invention of cynical and cheating destiny that has updated the only possible match: defense to the bitter end, with the final to the beautiful sailor, and counterattack.
We haven’t seen AC Milan-Napoli on the bill since August, but something else. When five starters per team are missing on the same occasion – due to injury or for other reasons, almost all protagonists (and don’t come and talk to me about enlarged companies and technical equivalences) a minor sight in which the organization and quality obligatorily make room for good intentions, for the urgency of classification and fear; a play that teaches how to overcome obstacles the imagination helps a lot.
It was therefore not a question of a championship challenge in the strict sense – Pioli was right – but of a significant passage of the season, which at this moment says Inter, even without conveying anything definitive. Inzaghi has a lot on his side: enthusiasm, optimism, stability, health, solutions, and goals. First of all, he has the moment.
Only the points counted last night to keep hopes and ambitions alive. And Napoli put them in cash it didn’t have Vesuvius inside, as his coach wished, but who gave an encouraging demonstration of seriousness and commitment. Milan have done much less than they should and could: they are struggling with the first crisis of men and games: Kjaer, Rebic, Leão, Calabria and Hernandez are not replaceable, not all at once.
Cagliari from one Walter to another
Mistakes pay off, often more than they should. I think of Cagliari and the leap in quality that the ambitious president Giulini was chasing for the fans – and for himself – and which soon turned into an endless nightmare. There was a shift where I suspected things were about to change: when the experience changed the personality. By its nature and vocation, Cagliari is a team that needs the second more than the first. Two names above all: Godin and Barella. The first, thirty-five, is a player of great experience, the second of personality was also at twenty: the personality has no age, experience yes.
A (negative) turning point was – a strictly personal opinion and not shared by most – something else the exemption of Walter Zenga, able to save Cagliari and throw a couple of young players (Walukiewicz, Carboni) but later held back by the lockdown. After Zenga, Giulini has the high card, Di Francesco, who ended up in a very complicated period. In turn, Semplici took over from Eusebio, and finally Mazzarri. The last mistake: Walter is a coach with advanced and rigid tactical principles, but to give and get the best he needs to start from the base, from the market. He is not the type to take the team in the running: in recent months he has also had bad luck, having to face a form of rejection by a squad winning by 24/25 points per group.
The company has decided to follow it all the way, convinced that it will be able to deliver it within the next month a more motivated group. I wish it both to Mazzarri and to Cagliari, remembering that, to put it in the words of Duras, ambition is a false currency that sometimes impoverishes those who own it, other times it enriches those who know how to sell it well.