Football News Napoli – Napoli-Spal 3-1, we propose below the editorial of Antonio Corbo for today’s edition de The Republic:
From a Sunday of ordinary serenity Napoli receives almost all the information it was waiting for. He misses the most important one: Atalanta escapes equally in a painful match. Wins in trouble in Udine. Consolidates the fourth place on the border of the Champions zone, and for Napoli the program is complicated, very difficult to recover 12 points ten rounds from the end. However, nothing will convince Gattuso not to attempt the feat next Thursday in Bergamo, if only because he also interprets the team’s desire for revenge.
His black streak began with Atalanta on 30 October, with the most unfair of draws, in a minute Napoli went from the refusal of a legitimate penalty with Llorente shot down by Palomino in the area to a dark counterattack, from the possible 3-1 to the disputed 2-2. The verdicts of the computer fixed in that game the best athletic performance of Napoli, a mockery but also the signal of bad stars on Ancelotti’s bench. In the deserted stadium, returned to silence since the end of the game, Gattuso has revealed a feature of his management. He remains on the field to direct the training of those who had not played. A hammer.
It never gives respite, bringing Napoli collected in pieces, rebellious and disbanded after the revolt of 5 November, to a sharp turn. The beginning of an iron positive series. When we say, continuity. And Napoli confirmed it yesterday: not only a wider and more comfortable victory of the result, but a confirmed stability, albeit with variable formations. Gattuso changes seven owners compared to Tuesday’s external victory in Verona, without the distinctive characteristics of Napoli having been lacking. The quality of the game.
The narrow and low triangles in the final phase of the action. The balances. Different setups were noticed in the second half when Napoli with reduced advantage (canceled by the Var the third goal and suffered that of Petagna by the Spal) alternates and improvises other modules: 4-1-4-1 with Mertens first tip, then 4-4 -2, starting from a vague 4-3-3 that seems to be the trademark.
The information that Gattuso was waiting for, except that of Atalanta’s victory, is very interesting. A parade of Meret on a broadside of Valoti confirms the value of the young talent, without however restoring the goalkeepers’ hierarchy, leaving them in a risky alternation. The central defensive pair comes out with a slight shadow: Koulibaly too far from Petagna at the time of the goal, but the ebony giant does his task with enough sufficiency, next to an increasingly convincing Maksimovic.
An honest but weak team like Spal allows Napoli to check again: rather than playing with restarts, it must command the scene with a ball possession that is a bit too slow as the pace of the game was slow, but peremptory in the domain of the game. Another intriguing novelty: Lobotka in the center places his chair making forget the equally wise direction of Demme, both Fabian Ruiz and Elmas launches the attackers with short offensive diagonals, perfidious cuts translated by Callejon, Mertens and Younes in the three goals of the victory.
A quarter, for a millimeter of offside, is withdrawn by the Var at Insigne. The captain reacts with an indecipherable grimace the substitution: woe to make a case of it. It is worth his generous and always elegant participation in a Naples that has such a strong desire to never stop.
