Napoli sporting director Mauro Meluso gave his apologies on behalf of the players for Saturday afternoon’s 3-0 home defeat against Gian Piero Gasperini’s Atalanta, insisting that the team have eight games of the 2023-24 left to ‘honour’ the club’s loyal supporters.
Though Napoli struck the woodwork twice, first half strikes from Aleksei Miranchuk, Gianluca Scamacca and a third from Teun Koopmeieners two minutes off the 90th condemned the Partenopei to a gut-wrenching home defeat.
Meluso spoke in front of the DAZN cameras on behalf of the playing squad after full-time, telling the media that: “We have eight matches left to pay our respect to our supporters, but we are sorry for this heavy defeat in front of our fans.
“Let’s play for the objective that we set ourselves weekly, without overthinking too much. Certain discussions need to happen at another time,” Meluso said, reported via TMW.
The discussions that Meluso was referring to relate to questions about star midfielder Piotr Zielinski, who is set to join Inter on a free transfer upon the conclusion of the 2023-24 campaign.
When pushed again on the subject of Zielinski, and also facing questions about the summer transfer market, Meluso said: “We need to go beyond the norm. There was no retaliation or attitude from Zielinski, nor did we go against his wishes.
‘With all the coaches who have come and gone this year, we have always said that meritocracy is important, there’s no doubt about that.”
Returning to Saturday’s 3-0 defeat to Atalanta, Meluso added: “It hurts the team and the technical staff. We thought that this year would go differently. Something wasn’t right, but this is not the time to talk about it.
“We hope that the team finds its greatness immediately, we lacked that today. Today, we lost our brilliance, especially in the first half. The second goal was decisive, it quashed our hopes. But we deserved the defeat today regardless.
“The return of high morale and competitive drive. Today I came to speak to keep the players out of the spotlight.
“In Naples, nobody loses motivation, the supporters make you feel a lot of passion and they (the players) need to rediscover their bite. We’ve had a good journey under Calzona, we hope to put a series of wins together, but unfortunately the first half left us perplexed.