Team Focus: New Look Napoli Hoping to Fly Below the Radar Under Sarri

Taking the microphone before a crowd of Napoli fans eagerly awaiting the presentation of the club’s new kit, Aurelio De Laurentiis finished his announcement with a cry of “vinceremo”. We will win. He didn’t specify exactly what. Last year De Laurentiis had got carried away, declaring “we will challenge for the Scudetto without ifs and buts” and later confessed that, in hindsight, it was a big mistake. He had raised expectations excessively and placed undue pressure on the players.  

Napoli were a huge disappointment. After a transition year under Rafa Benitez, the team, now supposedly fully adapted to his style and system, had been anticipated to push on and seriously challenge Juventus. Instead they regressed by 15 points and finished 5th. A combination of factors were to blame, but it shouldn’t be underestimated how damaging it was that Napoli got off on the wrong foot. The decision to wait until after the Champions League play-off with Athletic Club to invest with any ambition revealed itself to be a huge mistake.

A group full of internationals returned to pre-season late after the World Cup and were behind in their preparation. The squad was also weaker. De Laurentiis balked at agreeing to a contract that would have made Pepe Reina’s move from Liverpool permanent and so he departed for Bayern Munich. Federico Fernandez, a World Cup finalist, and the reliable Valon Behrami were also sold under the pretext that fresh money would arrive with which to sign upgrades in both their positions. Alas Napoli were eliminated by Athletic and either gambled on raw and as yet undeveloped talent - see Kalidou Koulibaly - or bought underwhelming players of a lower profile like David Lopez following months of paper talk and the generation of fan excitement about a possible Benitez reunion with Javier Mascherano.  

Irrespective of the depression, key players like Gonzalo Higuain felt upon missing out on the Champions League and how long it would take Napoli to snap out of it. The team, it’s true, could and should have done better. Yet it was quite obvious they were under equipped in delicate areas. There was uncertainty at the goalkeeper position. Young Rafael played between the sticks for the first half of the season, made a series of howlers, then lost his place to Mariano Andujar who didn’t particularly convince either.

Neither inspired the defence with great confidence. Koulibaly looked out of his depth for the opening stages of the campaign. Then there was Christian Maggio. Once upon a time he was a top wing-back, but, despite all the evidence to the contrary, Benitez stubbornly insisted that, in his opinion, he could perform as well as a full-back, even though anyone who had seen him play the role for Italy knew it was hopelessly optimistic.  

It didn’t help that the backline received so little protection from midfield either. Make no mistake, Behrami isn’t a world beater by any means, but at least he tackled. Napoli also lacked a conductor for their virtuosos up front. Gökhan Inler hasn’t fulfilled his promise. Nor has Jorginho yet, principally because he played in a midfield trio at Verona, not a tandem like at Napoli.  

Another issue with the team was how Benitez conspired to make captain Marek Hamsik worse, not better than he had been under Mazzarri. The Slovakia international never really looked comfortable playing higher up the pitch and with his back to goal than in a deeper position with the play in front of him and the chance to make the kind runs beyond the striker on which he had built his reputation.   

Encouragingly steps have been taken this summer to complete Napoli’s incomplete squad and correct some of the mistakes in tactical dogma made by Benitez. Reina has been brought back. His only season at Napoli was by no means perfect. The veteran dropped a few clangers but he kept 13 clean sheets in Serie A, a number Rafael and Andujar didn’t improve upon (9 between them) last term. Not only does Reina represent a safer pair of hands - his shot-to-save ratio of 77.4% was only bettered by Gigi Buffon and Morgan de Sanctis in the 2013/14 season - the Spaniard is also a leader and helps keep spirits high, a significant problem in his absence.

The defence, which ranked 12th in Serie A last season, still needs work. Napoli conceded 54 times, a figure 15 goals higher than the previous year. Understandably, they are pursuing a centre-back. Davide Astori’s move has stalled while bigger offers for better players like Alessio Romagnoli and Nikola Maksimovic have been rejected. After missing out on Matteo Darmian, a right-back remains a priority too.  

New coach Maurizio Sarri is expected to make a big difference here as well. Empoli’s low budget and no frills backline outdid Napoli’s last season. Hailed for how in-sync it was as a unit and with the shape of the team as a whole, there has been great curiosity about Sarri’s use of a drone to film training from above so he can show the players whether their positioning is correct or not.  

The biggest improvements have been made in midfield. Allan will bring bite to it. He made the most tackles in Serie A last season (162), 54 more than any other player (Juan Jesus with 108) and was second only to N’Golo Kante (176) in Europe’s top 5 leagues. Mirko Valdifiori will give it a sense of direction and imagination. No one created more chances than he did during the previous campaign (89) nor did anyone record more assists (6) from set pieces, which gives another edge and dimension to Sarri’s game-plan. Sarri is renowned for keeping a little black book with 33 original set-piece routines. Only Fiorentina (21), Lazio (16) and Torino (15) scored more from these situations than Empoli (14) last season. 

Hamsik’s retraction to play deeper and beside Allan and Valdifiori makes Napoli’s midfield a fascinating proposition this season. Which leads to the question: who will replace him between the lines? Well, the captain has put Lorenzo Insigne’s name forward and upon being given a pen and a piece of paper by Sarri and asked to draw where he would like to play, the Neapolitan indicated the No.10 role. Dries Mertens has also said he would be open to doing the job as well. Sarri played a 4-3-1-2 system with Empoli last season, but he won’t be shackled to it like Benitez was to 4-2-3-1. Given the array of wide players at his disposal, he has refused to rule out a 4-3-3 even if he also feels Jose Callejon and Mertens can play as second strikers too. 

Of course, Callejon might yet leave, although Atleti’s signing of Yannick Ferreira Carrasco perhaps closes the door to him at the Calderon. Meanwhile at centre forward, much depends on the future of Gonzalo Higuain. For instance, is he willing to play another season outside the Champions League? De Laurentiis’ decision to make public his €94m buy-out clause was designed to put off rather than encourage offers. Selling him would be deeply unpopular even if he did go through the motions last season and miss a string of crucial penalties, as he did for Argentina at the Copa America.  

Now that Carlos Tevez is gone, Higuain is without doubt the best striker in the division. Sarri, with all due respect, is unlikely to attract a better one and besides, possible replacements like Jackson Martinez and Carlos Bacca have already made moves. Napoli also passed on bringing Ciro Immobile back to Italy and to his hometown club. Duvan Zapata’s loan to Udinese as part of the Allan deal also means that Napoli only have one centre-forward other than Higuain. Manolo Gabbiadini has been excellent since he joined in the spring, but Napoli want him to play with rather than without Higuain. Otherwise, a sale would give the impression of a club scaling back its ambition.  

After Napoli’s internationalisation - the appointment of Benitez and signing of Higuain - this would be presented as the club withdrawing within oneself again, a re-italianisation, as personified in Sarri, Valdifiori, Insigne and Gabbiadini. Is that necessarily a bad thing? Not at all. It might actually do Napoli some good to fly under the radar a little again and be underestimated. This summer, Juventus and the Milan clubs have been attracting all the headlines. Napoli, meanwhile, have been quietly going about their business smartly and shrewdly. They might not win the Scudetto - that Jekyll and Hyde character of theirs is another problem Sarri will have to solve - but in all likelihood, and on the basis that the players buy into the new coach’s methods as they appear to being doing right now, it’s not too much of a stretch of the imagination to foresee them doing better and making a more sustained challenge than last season.

How do you think Napoli will fare next season with Sarri in charge? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below