Napoli, Meret is the hero of Marassi but the renewal is still far away. And Inter is watching

Naples, December 23, 2024 - The important thing is to finish, he sang Mina and in a certain sense he sang too Antonio Conte after the strange game of Marassi of his Napoli, as beautiful and at times dominant in the first half as disappointing, suffering and lucky in the second half in which the Genoa he would have deserved much more than just the goal he found Andrea Pinamonti, good only for writing your name on the scoreboard after those of Andre-Frank Zambo Anguissa e Amir RrahmaniThe Azzurri win, conquering one of the most difficult fields of the Serie A, thus theoretically providing a demonstration of strength to its rivals despite returning to the top of the table, cause Atalanta, lasted just one night. Yet, if it gets the headlines Alex Meret there's something wrong. And not just with regards to the facts in the camp.  

Super Meret at the Ferraris

  The athletic qualities of the Friulian, who has long been one of the best goalkeepers in circulation, are not a Saturday afternoon discovery. Yet, not even the many miracles achieved during his years with the Azzurri, embellished by the victory of the Scudetto, were enough to really make him enter Meret in the heart of a place that has always been accustomed to not pampering its favourites equally. It happens that the slightest slip, or presumed such, immediately puts the class of '97 back in the dock, sweeping away all the good things done previously: a severity that other Azzurri, championship winners and not, are spared. Who knows if this trend will be confirmed even after the exploit of Ferraris, basically a sample of the best skills of Meret worthy of those packaged ad hoc on the web. Instead this time there is no trick and there is not even a friendly editing: against the Genoa the Friulian really saved everything that could be saved, showing off both great saves from close range, his specialty, and from long range, perhaps the only field in which there were some empty shots every now and then. This time Meret closes every gap and saves the Napoli, still following the good train despite the rather complicated last few weeks, and Tale, which on the contrary would have risked getting another trial after the one spread over two sessions that occurred after the double debacle with the Lazio. So far this season the Azzurri have always grown along the way during the matches, building many victories in the second half: not least that of Udine, useful for finding the momentum after difficult days. Ferraris the opposite happens instead and for the first time Tale he gets angry like never before, not even after the heavy defeats against Verona, Atalanta e Lazio. The Salento coach, the one of the 'result-oriented', does not like what happened despite the success obtained on the field also thanks to Meret, the eternal precarious worker who in turn plays a very important personal game.  

Obstacles to renewal

  There has been talk for some time of renewing a contract that is due to expire on 30 June 2025, a date that is now incredibly close, to the point that in theory the goalkeeper could already be tied to another club in January. And in practice? Not exactly since yesterday in the shadow of Vesuvius the signature has been taken for granted, announced by some optimists every now and then with very close deadlines. Instead, the truth lies somewhere in the middle: Meret he will not sign for another club very soon as he would have full rights, but the white smoke with the Napoli to give new life to a partnership born in 2018. The points in question, not to even call them problems, are three, thus testifying to a road that is still uphill, although not at the same slopes as the Zoncolan. The first concerns the deadline, and the impression is that this time Meret he doesn't want a bridging renewal but a nice long one, which therefore (finally) gives concreteness to a relationship that has too often been in the balance and left almost postponed to other situations considered more important. We then move on to the engagement: today the class of '97 earns 2 million net (3,7 million gross) the result of that short-term renewal signed in 2022. Since then the Napoli has come a long way, even winning a championship thanks to the contribution of the Friulian, who probably, like many other heroes of the tricolour, would have liked to receive a long time ago an award that instead went to a select few and not without great feedback: just think of the end (in blue) of Victor Osimhen, a problem that could arise again in the near future, and Mario Rui, perhaps the richest out of the pink Serie A. To the problems common to all teams and latitudes, in Napoli da 20 years the typicality of image rights is added, the result of the thought of Aurelio De Laurentiis: a 'little gift' from the new sports director John Manna, by his own admission, he struggled to handle the first few months in blue. The same Meret and the related contract are no exception, given that apparently the image rights are also involved in a renewal that has always been announced but in fact never really been on the table. There is no shortage of teams waiting in the wings, of course, and the latest is thatInter which a year ago, right around this time, was starting to come out into the open for Piotr Zielinski after months of undercover work. Ad Appiano Gentile dream of an encore: the double blow to zero from Napoli and this time not only to shore up the bench and the so-called second lines. Hence the rush to De Laurentiis and his men before it's too late and then having to spend another summer brooding over the matter and then trying to soothe the wound by bringing up the fog and other alleged problems of the Lombard capital. The boss's plans were to have a meeting in the next few days between Manna and the entourage of Meret, but the issue is unlikely to be resolved by the end of the 2024 Appointment, therefore, at 2025, which could be the last remnant of the Friulian's adventure in blue, who could thus give in to the proverbial seventh-year crisis.

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