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Watching Napoli is like watching the apex of a thriller movie. You are on the edge of your seat, frightened and concerned for the outcome.
It is like the final battle sequence in the 2010 Christopher Nolan thriller Inception, when DiCaprio, Hanks and co enter the final layer of Cillian Murphy’s character Robert Fischer’s dream on the peaks of a snow-covered mountain.
As you navigate through the scene from your couch your heart pounds at a million miles an hour. What’s going to happen next? Who is going to die? Are they going to complete the job? Will Mr Cobb ever get back his family in the USA?
The movie comes to its brilliant, puzzling conclusion. You sit back in your couch and you think to yourself, that was fun.
It’s exactly the feeling you get watching Napoli.
Luciano Spalletti’s side concluded the latest Italian match week five points clear at the top of the table after AC Milan succumb to a shock loss at Torino.
That is a paragraph that would have been inconceivable at the beginning of the season. Napoli lost club captain Lorenzo Insigne to Toronto FC, Kalidou Koulibaly to Chelsea, and club record scorer Dries Mertens.
Yet here they are, top of Serie A and top of their Champions League group – which consists of Ajax, Liverpool, and Rangers. Such is their form, they have lost one game this season, to Liverpool in their group match in the Champions League.
Outside that, they have only drawn twice, winning their remaining 15 games, scoring 50 goals along the way including a 6-1 defeat of Ajax in the Champions League that would have made Diego Maradona proud. Huh, some praise.
It’s just what they’ve achieved, but how they’ve achieved it. When you watch Napoli, you can’t help but be taken aback by their security of the ball and safety in possession – they average 4.1 passes per attacking sequence and have 181 10-or-more passing sequences, both the most of any team in Italy – and their ability to wait like a cobra hunting a field mouse in the long grass, patiently waiting for the right opportunity to strike quickly.
Quite simply put they are frighteningly good. Right across the park.
Spalletti, recently explaining his view on modern football after his side beat Ajax 4-2 in Naples, stated: “Systems no longer exist in football, it’s all about the spaces left by the opposition. You must be quick enough to spot them and know the right moment to strike, have the courage to start the move even when pressed.”
These are similar principles to ones outlined by Graham Potter when interviewed by Brentford manager Thomas Frank before their recent encounter.
“We don’t really see the formation as the end goal,” the new Chelsea boss said. “We see actually how the team is playing. And then it’s about the personnel, about how you want to attack the opponent, how you want to defend against the opponent.”
Football is like chess. Where the pieces begin on the board is never their ending point, much like players. Similarly, pieces and players move in different ways, some are afforded the ability to move freely around the pitch or board, some are confined to structured movement that is equally as important.
(Photo by Giuseppe Maffia/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
And if football is like chess, then Napoli are Magnus Carlsen moving pawns to vacate space for the knights to advance.
Perhaps the personification of this ethos is in their second goal against Sassuolo at the weekend.
Kvicha Kvaratskhelia – Napoli’s queen – the mercurial winger from Georgia plucked from obscurity at the start of the season and now affectionately dubbed Kvaradona by the Neapolitan faithful (if you watch him, you will understand why), receives the ball on the left flank after a driving Mario Rui – the first build-up pawn – run out of Napoli’s half, cuts inside, plays a quick one-two to Stanislav Lobotka – the second pawn – and continues his central movements, laying a pass off to another pawn, Franck Anguissa.
The Cameroonian plays it across to his skipper, Giovanni Di Lorenzo – the bishop in this move – who takes single touch and aims as if he is going to pass to the most crucial component of this move.
Mateo Politano, the knight, drifts towards the right touchline, shaping to receive the ball, dragging Sassuolo’s left-back Rogerio with him and in doing so creating a sea of grass between the Brazilian and Gian Marco Ferrari for the unmarked Georgian to glide into, collect his skipper’s dinked pass, shimmy and muscle his way past the lagging Maxime Lopez before firing a ball into the box from the by-line for Victor Osimhen to score his second of the match.
Checkmate.
The move took 17 whole seconds from the time the Kvaradona received the ball on the touchline to the moment it was swept home by his striker. It is a perfect example of one of the myriad of ways Spalletti’s Neapolitan soldiers can split opponents and sweep all enemy ranks before them, and the base from which future campaigns, both domestic and European, are set to be launched from.
Napoli’s flying start has strongly positioned them as front runners for every trophy possible this season.
In Italy, they are presently peerless. Juventus have floundered this season and look unlikely to qualify for any European competitions next season, while both Milan teams will need to kick into gear to mount any form of challenge come seasons end.
Atalanta, Roma, and Lazio cannot be written off, but cannot be placed in the same breath as the side from Naples.
On the European front, a barnstorming Champions League campaign means Napoli will not need to face Bayern Munich, Manchester City, or Real Madrid in the round of 16, though they may still find themselves against the Messi-led PSG, which could prove a problem.
The future is not certain, especially not in football. But one thing is for sure, Napoli’s football is a bittersweet mix of terrifying for opponents and joyous for neutrals.
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