Naples, hello 2023: the best and worst of the scudetto year

Naples, 1 January 2024 - The first days of 2024 they will bring home Napoli some new faces, with Lazar Samardzik e Pasquale Mazzocchi as the main suspects to become the first news of the year that has just begun. However, a team ended up behind the Neapolitan club 2023 destined to remain in the history of the same despite a clear split that arrived practically in the middle, as if to further highlight the contradictions always present in a square that is unique in its own way.

The best

Despite the recent parable, which has in fact already almost completely ruined the entire current season, what prevails on the emotional scale of the fans is the first half of the 2023, the one that marked the end of a long championship drought 33 years. The symptoms of the undertaking, in truth, were already clear at the dawn of the year, when with a resounding poker game the Napoli he stretched it out Juventus al Maradona: all after having lost, just a few days earlier, at the home ofInter. It is no coincidence that there is some grumbling about the possibility for the Azzurri to enter a phase of decline when the championship resumes after the long break to make room for the 2022 FIBA WC was already rising: hence the importance of the success against the Bianconeri, which he would echo, again and again Fuorigrotta but at the end of the month, the one on Roma, obtained right in the tail end of the match thanks to a flick of Giovanni Simeone, the man of providence in the most complicated races. Winning such tough challenges, as we know, calls for a so-called year of grace. Not surprisingly, the positive trend of a Napoli that flew in each of its units extends to the Champions League, with the 15 March to enter the history of the club as the date of the first ever arrival in the quarter-finals: just to further sweeten the event and to create another memorable evening, the Azzurri extend theEintracht Frankfurt with a trio without appeal. However, the journey into the most prestigious continental competition would soon end at the hands of Milan, who curiously in those days would have given a sensational (but painless) internal poker to the future champions ofItaly. A stain quickly erased first and foremost by the last-gasp success achieved in the home team Juventus, with James Raspadori to place the penultimate brick before the tricolor mathematics, which arrived on 4st May thanks to the draw of Udine. To the Napoli a point was needed and the point was thanks to a goal, yet another, by Victor Osimhen, the cover man of the scudetto thanks to the deluge of goals scored in every way: as an area predator, with personal and head initiatives especially thanks to the enlightened suggestions of Khvisha Kvaratskhelia, devastating in particular in the first half of the calendar year and the entire last season. If the attackers, as we know, often take the headlines and the spotlight, the obscure job, the less obvious one for the less attentive gazes, falls to the midfielders and defenders. They end up in the first group Stanislav Lobotka e Andre-Frank Zambo Anguissa, the midfielders who, in order, create play and fuel the economy of the game Luciano Spalletti, probably the true symbol of a trophy raised by captain Giovanni Di Lorenzo, the wingman who became great in the context of a team surrounded by an aura of magic.

The worst

 Aura, not surprisingly, destined to fade already in the summer, when the page of the season 2022-2023 had been filmed: in this regard, the only chapter to forget of the aforementioned book is the poker foisted on the Maradona from Milan, a thud as loud as it is, indeed, painless. Yet, perhaps that very bad evening, recalled too frequently by Aurelio De Laurentiis even during and after the championship celebration, he had inflicted a first shock on the blue bench. The rest is known history: I land on the same as Rudi Garcia, first indicated as the best coach on the market and then exonerated and humiliated by the owner and his regrets, fueled by various debacles, curiously all in the context of that Maradona which just a few months ago had been the cradle of triumph. At dawn in September the Napoli loses badly against the Lazio, thus discovering their first internal cracks after a good start to the championship which apparently seemed to trace a line of continuity with the recent past. The beginning of October marked a much heavier blow: the one against the Fiorentina, in recent years often the executioner of the Azzurri as well as theEmpoli, the other Tuscany that November 12 it requires Fuorigrotta in the Cesarini area thanks to a gem from Victor Kovalenko, thus officially opening the crisis that leads to the dismissal of Garcia, according to many, the supreme evil that was clipping the wings of the champion teamItaly. But will it really be like this? Actually no, because his successor Walter Mazzarri he emulates his predecessor in every way, indeed even worsening the roadmap: the revived Tuscan technician has so far in fact collected 3 victories, 5 losses e 1 draw against the loot from 8 victories, 4 draws e 4 losses of the French, with the same De Laurentiis at this point nailed to his responsibilities and forced (a more unique than rare event) to make mea culpa. All this happened after the lackluster and almost useless goalless draw against Monza, but the worst of the Mazzarri up to it had worn out, always at Maradona, a few days before, when with a sensational poker the Frosinone had marked the elimination of Napoli laid down by the Coppa Italia. That evening the disaster was signed jointly by several very important owners, within By Lorenzo as a sad emblem, but also from players who arrived in the summer: Nathan, jesper lindstrom e Jens Cajust, a trio of flops which in itself is enough to highlight the mistakes and carelessness made in the midst of the championship hangover. To the stammering new ones must be added the old ones which have sensationally fallen: in fact almost all the heroes of the scudetto, with Juan Jesus e Alex Meret (who partially redeemed himself by saving the penalty from Matteo pessina) to lead the list of those who have gone from riches to rags in just a few months. Just like an entire square.Read also - The NBA results of the night