Marca celebrates the “counter-cultural” season of Arsenal and Naples, the masterpieces of Arteta and Spalletti
They lead the Premier League and Serie A with 50 points, they have been looking for the Scudetto for 19 and 33 years respectively. “Total football with different nuances”.
Ci Napoli 13/01/2023 – Serie A football championship / Napoli-Juventus / photo Carmelo Imbesi/Image Sport In the photo: Victor Osimhen
Marca dedicates the opening to the parallel between Arsenal and Naples, respectively at the top of the Premier League and Serie A standings with 50 points each. Two teams that unexpectedly find themselves at the top of their respective leagues. A countercultural season for both.
“The Premier League and Serie A have crossed the equator with unexpected leaders. ‘Football’ is experiencing a ‘counter-cultural’ season, in which the usual ‘winners’ are overtaken by two teams which in August were among the ‘big’ of the tournament but far from being candidates for the title”.
In England, Arsenal keeps Guardiola’s and the giant Haaland’s Manchester City at bay while Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea and all the other big English players “watch Arteta’s unstoppable team from afar”. Similarly, in Italy, the Naples “it’s driving people crazy” without Milan or Inter or Roma or Juventus sanctioned being able to oppose Spalletti’s team in any way.
Arsenal haven’t been champions since 2003-04, when they were still playing at Highbury. It’s been 19 years since the last Premier League triumph and now the dream of making it come true. Napoli, on the other hand, hasn’t won the Scudetto for 33 years, since the time of Diego Armando Maradona.
“Two journeys in the desert that can conclude this journey. The season was an oasis for Arsenal and ‘Napoli’ who are the two best teams in the big leagues. Neither Barcelona, leader of La Liga with 44 points, nor PSG nor Bayern reach the 50 points that Arsenal and Napoli have accumulated in the Premier and Serie A at the end of the first leg. They have parallel lives.”
In 19 days, both achieved 16 wins, 2 draws and only one defeat. They scored almost the same goals (46 and 45) and conceded almost the same goals (14 and 16).
“They have a lot of attack fire and are a wall behind. Two offensive machines, whose high-intensity football is vertical in the Italians and more combinatorial in the English, which overwhelms their rivals, who are left with no escape. Total football with different shades. A masterpiece by Arteta and Spalletti”.
Arteta, first of all. Arrived in December 2019, when Arsenal was in crisis, to replace Emery, he has done a job that goes beyond the football field, modernizing the mechanisms and structures. Since the arrival of the new manager, Arsenal have invested €417.5m since Arteta’s arrival in the signings of Odegaard, Gabriel Magalhaes, Thomas, White, Ramsdale, Zinchenko, Gabriel Jesus, Trossard, who joined young people like Saka, Martinelli, Nketiah, Saliba. Important players like Aubameyang, Lacazette, Özil left the team. The Spaniard shaped a dressing room to his liking that now dominates the Premier League with an iron fist.
Napoli is heading towards the third Scudetto in its history.
“Spalletti’s men, who accumulated 50 points in the first round (they became winter champions several days early), are not set on breaking records: they are the team with the most points in Italy in the first round and their number of goals (46 goals in 19 games) nobody equals them. Inter are the only team in the championship that can boast of having beaten the ‘Parthenopeans’ (1-0). A radical change”.
It’s still:
“Osimhen (13 goals in 15 games) and Kvaratskhelia (7 and 9) lead a group perfectly led by Luciano Spalletti. The Tuscan coach, who has been on the verge of glory at other times, this time seems to have finished his job: a vertical team, powerful availability, tremendously offensive but correct in defense and with a group of players that is not limited to the starting eleven . Substitutes like Simeone, Raspadori, Ndombélé, Mathias Olivera or Lozano keep the bar high”.
It all started with the summer transfer market, recalls Marca, when Giuntoli and De Laurentiis let Koulibaly, Fabián, Insigne and Mertens leave but at the same time surprised everyone with the purchase of ‘Kvaradona’, Min-Jae Kim and the redemption of Anguissa, who add to the purchases made in previous years and which have now exploded, such as Osimhen, Lobotka, Meret or Captain Di Lorenzo.
And to the advantage of Napoli there is another factor:
“the rivals are not at the highest level: Milan and Inter have doubts and are not regular in their results, Juventus has received a sanction and is (unless the appeal to Coni is favorable) excluded from the race for the ‘scudetto’. The southerners therefore have 19 games left to complete a historic feat. The same as the Arsenale”.