Zero at first that unwatchable, at times disheartening for the inadequacy. Untied, exhausted in the inability to recover balls in the opponent’s trocar, Napoli collapses on their fears. On the usual defects, on that acne still on the face that is an adolescent legacy that one does not have the courage to abandon. Those first 45 ‘must (and we’re sure they will) take Gattuso’s sleep away. Because the faults belong to everyone. His too.
One like the presences as a starter in the league. Ghoulam returns, but he is not Ghoulam. It is a memory, a shadow, a blurred hologram projected on the memory screen. Often out of position, he misreads situations that could potentially cost him dearly. The road is still long, perhaps too long. And the head and legs are tired, because it is twice as hard to be always in trouble. The heart tightens a little.
Two that follow the same paths. They smell the same possibilities, they look for the same spaces. Two, in practice, which are more similar than one might think. The Zielinski-Fabiàn coexistence in Gattuso’s Naples continues to be more complicated, than in comparison Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas in ‘The War of the Roses’ were jelly and fat. Adding talent is an operation that is not done with the calculator, otherwise the Harlem Globetrotters would have won a few rings in the NBA as well. Also in this case, it is Gattuso’s task to make the accounts work.
Three fatal seconds. To hesitate, to retreat when it is necessary to advance as an avalanche. There is all of Meret’s moment in that misjudgment, in the legs that don’t have all the circuits connected to the head. Meret’s agoraphobia, the fear of open spaces, the morbid attachment to the small area are a defect to be corrected, certainly not from today. But the moment, the uncertainty, the subordination do not help. Indeed they complicate. Bravo, however, to react.
Four league games without Osimhen, who will have one until the end of the year. At the crucial moment of the season, Napoli will have to give up its investment from 80 millions. A very expensive fine for De Laurentiis, undermined in the idea of football on which Gattuso had been working all summer. Victor’s depth, Victor’s breath, Victor’s oxygen: all denied due to an injury in the national team. There is something wrong with this system. And I pay (cit.).
Five gears. When Manolas scale with sequential change, the world lags behind. A space-time hole opens in the advances of the Greek, which imposes itself as a God and does not even break up the tuft. He opens the Nos, anticipates bodies and thoughts, plots and developments with the optimism of the gambler who knows his number is about to come out. Advances that change the emotional inertia of the match, physicality that ends up eliminating Dorian resistance.
Six goals from the bench: like Napoli nobody in Serie A in the miraculous catch. This team is granted new opportunities, Gattuso draws heavily from a staff that has the bets of individuals, to the point of creating an increasingly thin line between the owners and the substitutes. The five changes, the empty stadiums, the compressed races impose new ways of seeing and reading the races. The long Rose is the extra weapon, the way forward, a line that points the way to the Holy Grail that awaits under the ancient Roseline.
Seven assists in the season. He sat on the bench Mertens, sort chocolates and you really never know what happens to you. He wants the goal, but does not worry about his obsession and puts himself at the service of the team. The Flemish brushstroke on Lozano’s head is the signature stroke, the scar in the air that suddenly becomes rainbow. Ciro is there, even when he doesn’t score. Ciro fights for us, with us. Ciro you can put it everywhere, but one thing seems clear: this Napoli cannot do without its quality. And no, always try to make sense of it for Ciro. “If you start making sense of things it means you’re getting old.”
Eight out of ten in the league, these are the facts. That cannot be questioned, they must be acknowledged. Football is art, but it is also pragmatic. And then we could ask ourselves, with perplexity like the disciples of Bellavista in front of a Wesselmann, expose doubts about the future of the work. But we would be wrong. Football is now. Football forgets. Sometimes football wants to be just a result to be written on a scoreboard. The match with Sampdoria confirms this. Three more points, and you don’t throw them away …
Nine to the weight bomber. Petagna nails the net with his big head that chases away some bad thoughts, giving another three points after the wild card caught by Vigorito. “There were times when I wanted to quit” the center forward confesses moved after the match, that despite his broad shoulders Napoli has suffered, felt all over him, a pressure that threatens to crush you. He wants to take off the label of the rough provincial striker, but Andrea makes a big mistake. He simply has to continue to do the job for which Napoli chose him. Specialist and more. A goal that smacks of liberation.
Ten to the cyclone. To one man, only one, who tears up a boring script. “Is it possible to change the past or is time an immortal beast that cannot be tamed in any way?” He laughs Lozano, aware of having engraved like a scalpel on his past. He erased it, building a new world. A new time. A new self. Or perhaps the only self that ever existed. The one disguised as a can last year, who now looks so much like a devastating footballer. Inevitable in one-on-one, lucid in choices, effective in practice. Hirving takes Napoli and overturns it like a sock, he crashes without capturing the unfortunate Sampdoria. Uccella Augello (I couldn’t resist) as he wants, when he wants, where he wants. And he is not the first to review the shots of the Killer Doll at night this season.
