Multiple outlets are reporting that Napoli President Aurelio De Laurentiis is ready to stick with under-fire coach Rudi Garcia for the time being, despite earlier reports that the Frenchman could be at risk of losing his job after an underwhelming start at the Stadio Maradona.
Napoli were hit 3-1 by Fiorentina on Sunday evening, their second defeat of the season after just eight matches. For reference it had taken until March 3 last season for the Partenopei to have lost two matches in the league.
So far, Garcia’s side has looked like an entirely different team to the one that eventually won the 2022-23 Serie A title by a margin of 16 points.
After Sunday’s loss, Garcia was in for a meeting with the Napoli hierarchy to take stock of the situation and to evaluate some of the issues that have cropped up in the early stages of the season.
While De Laurentiis had been said to be considering Garcia’s long-term future, multiple outlets, including Calciomercato.com and Goal Italia report that Garcia will be given another opportunity to prove he is the right man for the job.
As per Calciomercato, there will have been an awareness that Napoli have important matches coming up after the international break, including a Champions League double-header against Union Berlin and the upcoming league ties against Verona and Milan.
However, a failure to impress next month could spell bad news for Garcia. Marco Giampaolo, Igor Tudor and Antonio Conte have all already been linked with the Napoli job in the event that the current boss is moved on in the near future.
ADL is the one to blame for Napoli‘s decline. Obvoously, from the beginning Garcia was not the right person. ADL’s ego will ruin his own club sooner or later.
Get rid of him yesterday. He has no vision for these players, blames them for his bad decisions, and the team is in a death spiral. I still think they’re either doing too much or not enough conditioning with the way they look tired. Fiorentina kept a harder press the entire match, and still seemed to have more energy.