Barcelona probably would have earned a congratulatory phone call from Juventus this morning. Not only did the Catalan side qualify for the Champions League quarterfinals for the first time in four years after their 4-2 aggregate win over Napoli, but they also helped Juve earn $54 million.
Barca’s elimination of Napoli, the Old Lady, now joins Inter as Italy’s two representatives in qualifying for the expanded FIFA Club World Cup in 2025, and with their participation come the extravagant prizes of the new version of the competition.
A win for Napoli would have meant joining Inter in the tournament. However, their brave, if unsuccessful, attempt to beat Barcelona for the first time managed to enrich the Old Lady a little more, and their elimination puts the seal on what has been a terrible season.
Not only are the club out of contention in all competitions, but they are also by far the worst Serie A champions in the three-points-per-win era, which dates back almost 30 years. Although the season is far from over, Napoli have now been league leaders Inter for 31 years and this crusade has proved far more tumultuous than the 1990/91 season, in which Diego Maradona refused to board a Moscow-bound plane for a European Cup match and was eventually expelled from the Italian match for testing. He tested positive for cocaine and scored only 3 goals in the league as his demons took full control of him.
Francesco Calzona is the No. 3 coach this season, and the Italian is at least starting to pick things up, but it’s too late to get anything out of Napoli’s season. A litany of mistakes have been made since last June, when they ended their agonizing wait to win the Scudetto without the genius of Maradona. The blame lies squarely with owner Aurelio De Laurentiis, who hasn’t made any smart decisions since.
Luciano Spalletti and sporting director Cristiano Giuntoli have left; the former has not been properly replaced (and some Napoli enthusiasts would say that is not the case at all, considering who succeeded Spalletti), while the latter’s former position remains vacant; Kim-Min Jae sold to Bayern Munich and De Laurentiis opted to sign Natan, a 23-year-old centre-back from Red Bull Bragantino, instead of an experienced and high-profile defender; no midfielder was appointed, leaving last season’s heroes Stanislav Lobotka, Franck-Zambo Anguissa and Piotr Zielinski to take charge once back amid obvious symptoms of fatigue and disinterest.
Going back to the start of the new millennium, Lazio had just won their second Scudetto on the final day of the 1999/2000 season. Coach Sven-Goran Eriksson knew that in order to keep Lazio at the top of what Como was then the most productive league in the world, owner Sergio Cragnotti needed to make small changes to the team. In addition to Angelo Peruzzi and Stefano Fiore, Claudio López and Hernán Crespo arrived, the latter for a world record payment.
A year later, Roma, who had just won their first Scudetto since 1983 and kept the name in Rome for the second year in a row, paid huge sums to sign teenage superstar Antonio Cassano from Bari to congratulate Gabriel Batistuta, Vincenzo Montella. , Marco. Delvecchio and Francesco Totti. Any winning team wants to renew itself to keep the brain focused and avoid stagnation. De Laurenti, on the other hand, prefers to save money and keep the players he already had. The end result is a team full of players who have been vastly underperforming and many of whom must be sold at the end of the season. Stagnation and chaos have been the key words of the season for Napoli, a club with prospects of repeating last season’s success, but in the end it was the other way around.
Victor Osimhen, who did not oppose Barcelona, is not there yet, and one of Europe’s biggest fish will likely activate his buy-back clause at the end of the campaign. Apart from Osimhen, a summer clean-up is needed and cases may have just been presented for Mario Rui, Juan Jesus, Anguissa, Amir Rrahmani, Giovanni Simeone and Diego Demme to be ruled out; Zielinski also left and joined Inter in July.
That said, there is still hope and games for Napoli to salvage their terrible season. If Italy secure a fifth place in next season’s Champions League (their cause is not helped by Napoli’s exit), then Napoli are just 4 points off fifth place. placed Roma with 10 games left to play. Calzona made Napoli a little more compact and allowed them to win games again, and a top-five finish would be a minor miracle given the severity of the last 12 months.
Still, the club wants a serious restart this summer. But the question remains whether De Laurentiis will be informed of his mistakes. The first date will be a substitute for Giuntoli; the next one will be to hire Vincenzo Italiano as coach, with the Fiorentina boss adapted to the game of this current Napoli team; They want to sign two centre-backs, as well as quality replacements for Zielinski and Osimhen.
If De Laurentiis is successful this summer, Napoli could do a lot to bring back the name they have well loaned to Inter this season. Otherwise, the Neapolitans could wait a long time to win a fourth Scudetto.