A year with Splattei, De Laurentiis, Lobotka, Kvara and the phenomenon Cristiano Giuntoli
TuttoNapoli.net
Zero to an Italian football buried by scandal and shame. The D’Onofrio case, Trentalange’s resignation and the Juventus earthquake with the interceptions penetrating the veil of a sick system. One of the worst things about this 2022 is the awareness that the ball, the ball you love, has still been stabbed in the back too many times. As always, the fans pay the highest price.
A year of radical change. A change of state that has scared everyone, like hesitating to jump in the water in the summer, knowing you’ll feel better afterwards. Facing a possible breaking point, Napoli came out even stronger. Good job everyone.
Two halves of the season: the second half of the last season and the first half of the current season. Last year’s second leg was marred by dreadful defeats to Empoli and Fiorentina and a few too many regrets. Many thought it would be difficult to see Napoli as strong as last year. Finding an even stronger one is as surprising as a Circumvesuviana train arriving at its destination on time.
Three like the points accumulated for each win: the total tells of a Napoli who accumulated more points in 2022 than anyone else in Serie A. There are 81 points in 34 games against Milan’s 77, figures that give Luciano Spalletti solidity and merits that cannot be ignored. His Napoli has changed very, very much and kept the performance very high. And no, that can’t be a coincidence. Reliable like the aunt who doesn’t throw unlikely gifts at Christmas and hands you the bill under the counter with the air of a drug dealer from the Medellin cartel.
Four in mathematics stands for stability and completeness: “The one becomes two, the two become three, and through the third the fourth completes unity”. And when it comes to aggregation, how could we not think of Stan Lobotka, the center of the Napoli universe. It exerts a magnetic force, it attracts responsibilities and balloons like a black hole that does the dirty work and swallows all the problems. Since the Slovak is in the process of enacting laws, everyone seems calmer, everything seems more harmonious and coordinated.
Five difficult goodbyesMe, memories in an attic that deserves a special place in the heart. Ospina, Ghoulam, Mertens, Insigne and Koulibaly were pillars of a team that deserved more and deserves to be remembered as one of the few that stood up to many. The past is who we are, a fundamental passage for the present state. Those who live in Naples for so long never really leave it.
You are like normality, the real exceptional achievement of Luciano Spalletti. Curbing the excesses of the square, he narrated with the serenity of Luciano Onder in Medicina 33 an extraordinary journey in this first part of the season. Everything was aimed at keeping spirits, hearts, pindaric flights of fancy in check. The goal is concrete, real, achievable. To get there, however, you don’t have to take your hands off the handlebars until the last meter of the climb. The banner is too far away to lower the frequency.
Seven to Victor the Masked Avenger. He knew how to respond to everything from poison verdicts to horrific injuries, regenerating his body and mind as if he had one avatars to give him the change. Osimhen’s secret is energy that flows like waves that are never ready to seek shore. “Water has no beginning and no end. The sea is around you and within you. The sea is your home before yours. Water connects all things: life to death, darkness to light.” Victor, from skin to heart, an ebony avatar that constantly powers Napoli’s engine.
Eight points ahead of second. Napoli will thus return to the starting line-up for the second half of the championship, aware that every step has terrible pitfalls. However, Spalletti’s team has the plot of his own destiny in his hands and shoots the film with the camera that could become a masterpiece. As The Fabelmans taught us, “Movies are dreams you will never forget.”
Nine to the abandoned masterpiece “O sapunar ten a giotto e nun o’ sap…se l’è scurdat”. If Dante had seen it for the first time Kvarachelia On a ball field he would have dedicated the verses “A miracle to be shown” to him. This boy with a shy face and an unstoppable stride has come down from the ranks of angels, a character who was also able to catalyze the attention of The New York Times. An incredible story in which Napoli will draw a star from among the 3.709 million inhabitants of Georgia, which has always remained on the fringes of the football empire. Then comes Khvicha and pushes all borders, with a feint he also sends the earth’s axis into a spin. “It seems as if a gentle spirit, full of love, moves from his lips and says to the soul: He sighs“.
Ten to Cristiano Giuntoli and Aurelio De Laurentiis. The cat and fox of the summer of the transfer market, while the others threw themselves on the remains of a worn-out system, the Neapolitan duo had opened their eyes to new horizons. Thanks to a spy agency rivaling the CIA, they’ve gotten their hands on Kvara and Kim, children of a new balloon claiming space with a ravenous claim for attention. You have faced a new era with a firm will and never experienced events, but influenced them. There was vision and courage, stubbornness and that dash of insane madness that fuels every historical revolution. The A16s were dissolving like snow in this warm winter sun, the rumblings zeroing out like checking accounts after the Christmas holidays. Cristiano and Aurelio, Aurelio and Cristiano get up from the table looking like someone who has won practically every hand. To those who denied them, they leave this message: “If you can’t spot the chicken in the first half hour of the game, then you’re the chicken”.