What a show Napoli. Conte is being a Count. He is making the most of the players that De Laurentiis has made available to him, he is accustoming his team to having an obsession with victory. He is also training the Neapolitan press, which is sometimes too demanding. Against Fiorentina there was no Kvara, one of their stars. And not even Politano. But no one noticed. Conte transformed Neres into a player capable of splitting matches. This is the effect that a coach like Antonio generates. Someone who knows how to win championships. McTominay became another key player. What a talent. Score. He invents football, he has an innate tactical sense. Napoli has everything to win the scudetto also because it has further room for growth. From Kvara, from Lukaku, from whoever will arrive in the winter transfer market. The other side of Franchi’s challenge is a Fiorentina who have only managed one point in their last four matches. No summary trial, for goodness sake. The Viola’s ranking is still excellent. But Palladino went too far in revolutionizing the team after Bove’s illness. Failing to find the right idea.
In addition to Conte there is another coach on the cover. I’m talking about Claudio Ranieri. When he arrived at the helm of Roma there was a scary ranking and a lot of confusion in every corner of the club.
Sir Claudio started working with his head down. Building day after day. The victory in the derby is a sign of the Ranieri effect. Of course, the Champions League zone is still very far away. But in the meantime the coach has restored identity to a group that had crumbled into a thousand pieces. And Pellegrinio, scorer of an important goal in the derby, also recovered. I’m curious to see Roma’s return round.
The Italian Super Cup final will be played in Riyadh this evening. As Lorenzo Di Benedetto wrote in the editorial after Milan-Juve, such a beautiful challenge deserved the San Siro scenario with eighty thousand souls in love. Of course, football, especially Italian football, desperately needs money. But who cares about the passion of the fans? Which should be the real driving force of the whole movement. Moving on to the technical aspect, Inzaghi’s Inter are “too” favorites. And this must sound like a serious wake-up call for the Nerazzurri. Derbies have strange stories. Often the teams that seem inferior (in this case on paper Milan) manage to obtain sensational results. But if Inter plays Inter…
From Riyadh, a Juventus team that is even more under scrutiny has returned to Italy. Thiago Motta continues to leave us perplexed. His choices, his tactical project, the management of some of his stars are not convincing. I’m thinking in particular of Vlahovic. But not only him. I have great respect for Thiago Motta but I struggle to recognize him in his early career as Juventus coach. He has five months to keep the Juventus bench. As I said at the beginning Conte is bringing value to Napoli. Motta, honestly, no.