Napoli comes from a transition season. For the first time in ten years, since De Laurentiis sacked Donadoni, the team changed coaches during the current season. Ancelotti had returned to Italy to get Napoli to raise a trophy, helping him in the last step he missed with Sarri. His failure led to a downsizing of the team’s general ambitions, which offset the bitterness of seventh place only with the Italian Cup.
In recent years, Napoli had established itself as the second force in the league but only one bad season was enough to call everything into question. Today it looks like an end-of-cycle team, worn out in its best elements and which is experiencing a tiring generational change. He can start from the excellent second round, which if it had been a championship in its own right would have been concluded by the Neapolitan team in third place.
Today it is difficult to say to which size Gattuso’s Napoli belongs. If it is a team, that is, still able to compete for the top positions, and to qualify for the Champions League without too much effort; or if now it is a team that every year can find itself entangled in the positions that lead to the Europa League. The summer market, in this sense, will tell us a lot about the type of ambitions of De Laurentiis’ team: whether he will accept another passing season, thinking about a period of renewal, or whether he will immediately invest enough to be competitive for the top positions.
The players who can leave Napoli
Let’s start by saying that the Napoli summer market will go through some tiring sales. Allan is now out of the project, with the Brazilian playing just over a thousand minutes this year. The company hopes to make around thirty million from its sale. Lozano, paid 40 million a year ago, is on the market but, given its costs, only on loan.
However, it is above all Koulibaly the candidate for the painful sale who will bring money to the club’s coffers. His stay in these years has been the most evident symbol of Napoli’s strategy based on continuity, on the permanence of the best players even accepting a risk of devaluation. A risk that he paid with Koulibaly, given the figures we are talking about for a possible move to Manchester City (around 70 million). If the Senegalese defender were to be sold, the only two great survivors of Sarri’s cycle at that point would be Insigne and Mertens, who has recently renewed his contract for two years despite several goodbye rumors.
However, the Belgian’s offensive productivity dropped drastically in the last season, along with his playing time: 9 goals and 7 assists, not a few but not up to what Napoli needs. The Belgian striker, in short, no longer seems to have the level of physical excellence that Napoli needs and his place seemed finally to have been taken by Arkadiusz Milik, who, however, after a few very positive months began to lose hits. After the resumption he played half of the games as a starter, disappointing Gattuso, who criticized him and then admitted that he wants to leave. Milik should therefore represent another sale and replacing him will not be easy.
The question of the center forward
On Milik it is worth stopping for a moment. Because if it is true that the Polish center forward has always given little guarantees from a physical point of view, given his serious knee injuries, it is also true that his attacking productivity has always been at a high level in recent seasons. Last Serie A Milik scored 0.6 goals every 90 ‘in the league and is fifth in Serie A for xG on play every 90’.
However, Napoli has already bought Victor Osimhen, making him the most expensive player in its history. A dominant striker at an athletic level and difficult to mark in transition, but who will not be able to offer the same presence in the penalty area as Milik. Then a lot will depend on what Napoli will be: a team that attacks in large spaces with a low center of gravity, as we have seen for example against Juventus in the Italian Cup, or one that will try to control the ball and very aggressive in the reconquest phases, as seen on other occasions, including the match against Barcelona.
In January, Napoli had also already bought Andrea Petagna, a center forward profile diametrically opposite to Osimhen: heavy and technical in tight spaces, and with a good instinct for attacking direction. His operation, however, seems simple player-trading: bought for 16 million, he already seems to be looking for a new team. Who knows if the peculiarity of his profile, and the context of the market, does not lead him to stay. It is certainly interesting that there is talk of a possible exchange with Kevin Lasagna, another striker who loves to run in large spaces and in transition.
The left back
The most recognized market need for Napoli is that of a low left winger. Mario Rui, as usual, was excellent with the ball and mediocre without. Napoli would need a profile with more room for growth and more reliable defensively. Among the names that circulate that of the Ukrainian Mykolenko, of Dynamo Kiev, is among the most peculiar. He is 21 years old and very athletic. He likes to carry the ball and accelerate on the wing; it has a heavy and powerful ride, like a crawler, but not accompanied by great technique. A very different profile from that of Mario Rui, modest on an athletic level but with great reads with the ball.
The other name is that of Reguilon, which however is sought by half of Europe and is valued between 20 and 25 million euros by Real Madrid, as reported by Gianluca Di Marzio. In the shameful abundance of left-backs of the “You meringues”, Reguilon seemed the most” normal “: the most linear and scholastic, the one with the least room for improvement. Still does not seem to be up to the level of Real Madrid, which as regards the external in recent times has done without worries of Theo Hernandez and Hakimi. Yet at Sevilla Reguilon proved to be a more complex full-back than he seemed: physically brilliant, especially in his first steps, intelligent in his choices, reliable defensively and quite creative. A low winger maybe not among the best in the world, and not able to represent an independent threat with his athletic and technical skills (like Theo or Hakimi, for example), but reliable and complete. It would be a significant improvement over Mario Rui.
The market, however, has unpredictable dynamics and new names come out at any moment. In the last few days, for example, there has been talk of Junior Firpo of Barcelona, who would not be part of Koeman’s plans, and especially of Nicolas Tagliafico. Another full-back not too physically fit but with great intensity and attention, and for this reason an interesting profile for Gattuso.
How to replace Koulibaly
It is from the early days of the transfer market that there has been talk of Napoli’s interest in Gabriel Magalhaes of Lille, who in some ways is the typical Lille player. That is, very athletic and very expensive. A profile that, in Giuntoli’s mind, could fill Koulibaly’s absence. Magalhaes is also a very strong player in recoveries and cold ball and chain. Now that it seems close to Arsenal, Napoli seems to want to exploit the market dominance to try to take Sokratis, more experienced but rather unreliable in recent seasons, as well as declining on an athletic level.
In the meantime, Napoli already has Rrahmani, one of the revelations of last season. A very strong defender in advance and very enterprising ball and chain, but everything to be tested in a defense at 4. Given his presence it is strange that Napoli are also looking for Matvienko, a very similar profile and that, at a (perhaps) low cost , would solve both the central defensive problem and the left-back problem. He is 24 years old and has ordered technical fundamentals: he is used to playing in a possession team and starting the action from behind with his left. His defensive skills are still all to be verified, coming from an unreliable context such as the Ukrainian championship. We are certainly talking about an athletic player: especially in the last part of the season he was also deployed left-back and there he showed a modest speed for a winger but significant for a central.
In any case, it is not certain that Napoli necessarily need a defender with Koulibaly’s athletic exuberance. If he were to play with a lower center of gravity, it would be better to ensure a reliable defender in marking and in the penalty area.
Cengiz Under or what other offensive winger?
The transfer market session in January changed the identity of Napoli through very different players than usual. If with Ancelotti the club was looking for players at ease with the ball and playing behind the pressure lines, so far Gattuso has seemed to love intense and orderly players. And if Cengiz Under is not ordered it is certainly intense; an offensive winger diametrically opposed to Callejon but with still undefined margins for improvement. In his three years in Italy he has already shown the darkness and the light of his repertoire: matches in which he was literally unstoppable – for example in this year’s derby against Lazio, 9 successful dribbles – alternating with others in which he was unable to be of any use to the team. In between, many physical problems.
At 1:52 the best play of a sumptuous match, with a heel dribble on Lulic and a perfect ball in the area on which they were all late.
Federico Bernardeschi instead, unlike Under, has already recognized limits, but also in the good. A player already fully trained, tactically disciplined and who has shown that he can play multiple roles. At 26 he is in the prime of his career theorist and would certainly be more at ease in the larger spaces in which he wants to attack Gattuso’s Napoli.
For the offensive winger on the right, however, Napoli must face the usual dilemma: how to balance the need to touch many Insigne balls on the left. A balance in recent years guaranteed by Callejon’s cunning in movements without the ball: a rare quality in contemporary football. A profile certainly more expensive than those mentioned, but which could well enter Gattuso’s 4-3-3, would perhaps be that of Federico Chiesa: a footballer still to be disciplined, making him touch fewer balls, but with a non-trivial instinct. in the finalization and that would add an unpredictability to the Napoli attack that at the moment seems to be missing.
A purchase that would make Napoli more of a team than Gattuso, whose ideas are slowly but surely shaping the squad as well.
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