Napoli are CHAMPIONS! Serie A winners set blueprint for success AND profit

Carlo Garganese

• Updated: 4 May 2023 21:39 BST
• 5 min read

The party of the year has just begun. Napoli are Serie A champions for the first time in 33 years.

It will be the biggest party ever seen in a football city since the God-like Diego Maradona led Napoli to their maiden Scudetto in 1987. Back then the celebrations lasted not for days, not for weeks but, in many places, months.

The Calcio-mad Napoli fans have waited a long time to win another Scudetto. They have had some near-misses in recent years, going painfully close under Maurizio Sarri.

But there was never any doubt of the Partenopei ending their drought this season under coach Luciano Spalletti. They started the season at the speed of light and never slowed down. Quite simply, they have destroyed the rest of Serie A this campaign whilst playing arguably the most entertaining football in all of Europe.

Napoli win the Scudetto

Napoli are champions with five games to spare. They have won 25 of their 33 games, scoring a whopping 69 goals along the way. Lazio in second are 16 points adrift, signaling the gulf in class between Napoli and the rest of the league.

In Victor Osimhen and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia they have boasted the two best players in the division. In Kim Min-Jae, the best defender not only in Serie A but, according to Spalletti, in all of Europe. In Stanislav Lobotka, the best midfielder in the league.

All over the pitch, Napoli have been able to count on stellar performers; captain Giovanni Di Lorenzo, Mario Rui, Amir Rrahamni, Andre Frank Zambo-Anguissa, Piotr Zielinski, Eljif Elmas, Matteo Politano, Hirving Lozano, supersub Giovanni Simeone, goalkeeper Alex Meret. The list goes on and on.

Napoli’s Scudetto success is an example to every club out there, both big and small, on what is possible when you put together a team-building project and execute it perfectly.

At the start of the season, most experts predicted that Napoli wouldn’t even finish in the top four after they sold a host of their established and experienced players.

President Aurelio De Laurentiis and transfer chief Cristiano Giuntoli decided to revolutionize the squad. They offloaded captain Lorenzo Insigne to Toronto, club record scorer Dries Mertens to Galatasaray, star defender Kalidou Koulibaly to Chelsea, key midfielder Fabian Ruiz to PSG and first-choice goalkeeper David Ospina to Al Nassr.

In one summer, Napoli sold five first-team pillars amidst heavy criticism from fans and the media.

With the money raised, Napoli bought Kvaratskhelia for just €10m from Dinamo Batumi, Min-Jae from Fenerbahce for €18m and made Anguissa’s move permanent. They then added depth to the squad by signing Getafe’s Mathias Olivera, Brighton’s Leo Ostigard, as well as Simeone and Giacomo Raspadori on initial loans that will become permanent.

Incredibly, Napoli made a transfer profit while also significantly lowering the wage bill and the average age of the first-team and squad.

It was the work of genius from Giuntoli and De Laurentiis, ably assisted by Spalletti who proved once again that he is one of the best coaches in the world at developing players and turning them into stars.

Spalletti, at the age of 64, is also a master at getting his team to play modern, attractive, attacking short passing football. His Napoli team have dominated possession and territory, with a high line and high press that has relentlessly smothered and suffocated opponents.

After a career of being a Serie A bridesmaid, it is also a beautiful story to see Spalletti finally get the Scudetto his brilliant, innovative career deserves. This is a manager who has contributed so much to the evolution and modernisation of coaching. He was the first modern manager to use the false 9 at Roma with Francesco Totti, and his ideas were then copied by the likes of Pep Guardiola, Alex Ferguson and so many others.

There have been a string of memorable moments during the season; the 4-1 thrashing of Liverpool, the 5-1 smashing of Juventus and the 1-0 in Turin recently, Osimhen’s stunning winner versus Roma, Kvaratskhelia’s backheel assist against Frankfurt.

The only disappointment was the Champions League quarter-final exit to AC Milan. Napoli lost 2-1 on aggregate after hitting their one period of poor form during the campaign in April.

But this won’t diminish what has been a historic season for Napoli.

Let the party begin!