AEveryone loves Luciano Spalletti. The SSC Napoli coach is considered the man who built a fabulous team from a good squad. “La grande bellezza” (the great beauty) is how the Corriere dello Sport recently summed up Naples’ more than graceful game. Italy is unanimous in this assessment. Nobody in Italy is currently playing as well as Napoli, the undisputed leaders of Serie A with a 15-point lead. Maybe not even in Europe.
In the round of 16 of the Champions League, Spalletti meets Eintracht Frankfurt with SSC Naples this Tuesday (9 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the Champions League and on Prime Video), a supposedly easy draw given the competition. But Spalletti has been warning for days: “Eintracht is just as strong as we are!” Spalletti has to be the spoilsport in enthusiastic Naples, a city that identifies with its football team like few other places. Everything will now become more difficult in the unexpected success, says the coach. A drop out and then the lightness would be gone, the creativity, the spectacle. All those wonderful attributes that SSC Napoli have been honored with since the start of the season. “Woe to us if we’re not careful,” warns Spalletti. Thinking one game at a time is his motto.
Wherever he goes, the Tuscan makes players and teams better. He invents the most courageous tricks, for example when he suddenly let Roma legend Francesco Totti play as a center forward and years later sorted it out as dispensable. His former wife, Ilary Blasi, disparagingly described the coach as a “little man”. Inevitable skirmishes along the way. Spalletti, 63 years old, also knows it the other way around, when happiness was not even to be guessed at.
33 years after the last championship with Maradona
“We’ll give you back the panda, the main thing is that you leave.” Ultras painted these words on a banner at the Maradona Stadium in May 2021. The coach, who was just new in town, had his small car stolen the previous October. Even then, expectations were high in Naples. The fact that the team qualified for the Champions League again after two years was not enough. It must be more now, 33 years after the last championship with Diego Armando Maradona. The Ultras presented then-captain Lorenzo Insigne with a packet of eggs as a metaphor for what they missed about the team.
Then summer came. The coach was resting at his vineyard in Tuscany, where he keeps his distance and makes wines. Playmaker Insigne wanted a higher salary, which he now receives from Toronto FC in Canada. Defense chief Kalidou Koulibaly moved to Chelsea, and attacker Dries Mertens, Napoli’s top scorer in club history up to that point, was also unable to agree on a contract extension. The fan-favorite Ich-AGs were gone. But that was good for the team.
Spalletti, a master of adaptation, positioned Stanislav Lobotka as a central figure in front of the defense in the 4-3-3 system. The South Korean Kim Min-jae made defensive legend Koulibaly forget, a certain Chwitscha Kvarazchelia came from Georgia. Because of his dribbling, they call the 22-year-old in Naples “Kvaradona”. Striker Victor Osimhen, once active at VfL Wolfsburg, says it’s a pleasure. He scored 18 goals in 19 Serie A games. There was only one in this year’s Champions League.
Leading the way: Luciano Spalletti in Naples
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Image: Reuters
In the group stage Napoli prevailed spectacularly. In the city, they are still raving about the 4-1 victory over Liverpool, 3-0 against Glasgow Rangers and 5-1 at Ajax Amsterdam. Expectations are extremely high after the first half of the season. “I have an obsession,” says Spalletti. “I want to make the city of Naples happy.” The community, which has its dark side, should be the focus of his attention.
After an arranged mass brawl in January at a motorway service station, the Ministry of the Interior banned the Napoli Ultras from attending away games in Italy for two months, but 2,700 fans are allowed to attend in Frankfurt. The machinations of the club are not always beyond doubt. The public prosecutor’s office in Naples is investigating the club for accounting fraud. There are said to have been irregularities in the transfer of striker Osimhen 2020 from OSC Lille for 72 million euros.
Spalletti has the biggest account to settle with himself. He’s one of the most recognized professionals in Italy, almost always getting top marks as a coach for his teams’ electrifying attacking game. He coached FC Empoli, Udinese Calcio, AS Roma, Zenit Saint Petersburg, Inter Milan, all played breathtakingly well. But only in Russia he managed to win the championship. Napoli is Spalletti’s big chance to finally win a major title in Italy. Some even dream of winning the Champions League.
