For decades Luciano Spalletti was one of Italian football’s unlucky losers, always on the verge of glory only to falter, so Susy Campanale thinks it’s fitting he finally succeeds at a club with the same history.
Everyone remembers that Jose Mourinho press conference in charge of Inter when he ranted in a mixture of Portuguese and Italian about the opposition coaches he had shrugged off in Serie A, listing his silverware haul compared to their ‘zeru titoli.’ The tacticians he was mocking were Claudio Ranieri and Luciano Spalletti. A few years later, Ranieri would win the most extraordinary Premier League in history with Leicester City, while Spalletti will finally get his moment in the sun in 2023. It has been a very long time coming.
The 64-year-old from Certaldo is not exactly a loser, considering he won two league titles in Russia for Zenit St Petersburg, with the Supercoppa Italiana and two Coppa Italia trophies for Roma, but his career has been one of punching above his weight and yet never quite making it to the top. His Udinese earned their first Champions League qualification. He was twice named Serie A Coach of the Season in 2006 and 2007 for a Roma side that excited everyone with scintillating football and made life difficult for Mourinho’s post-Calciopoli Inter. They were also capable of quite extraordinary collapses, fumbling a three-goal lead with Inter in the Supercoppa Italiana and famously losing 7-1 to Manchester United in the Champions League.
A running theme in Spalletti’s recent Serie A experiences has been a fantastic start that peters out once the spring flowers begin to bloom. Inter were unbeaten and top of the table in December 2017, only to eventually scrape fourth place in a showdown with Lazio. The next season, the Nerazzurri were third at the midway stage and again left it to the very last minute to lock down that Champions League spot. Despite achieving what had been asked, he was sacked.
A two-year hiatus followed, Spalletti licking his wounds and wondering why he had this reputation as a failure when he usually hit the targets expected of him. Meanwhile, Napoli had the mirror-image experience, rarely considered favourites when the season began, enjoying a surge that put them into pole position only to eventually crumble and feel crushed. Maurizio Sarri was the ultimate example, playing the best football in Europe and yet mentally too weak to handle setbacks. Carlo Ancelotti and Gennaro Gattuso continued the theme, failing to control the squad full of fiery egos and deal with President Aurelio De Laurentiis hovering over them like a dark cloud.
Let’s be honest, nobody had much hope for the union between Spalletti and Napoli. They seemed too similar, all style and no substance, bound to fall away when it came to the crunch. Just as a negative plus a negative becomes a positive, perhaps this is the mathematical equation that took the Partenopei to victory after a 33-year absence.
It was the usual routine in the first season, mind you, winning the opening eight Serie A games and suffering the usual springtime slump to eventually finish in third place. Same old Napoli. Same old Spalletti.
Very few expected anything good starting the 2022-23 campaign, especially with De Laurentiis cutting down the wage bill, shoving fan favourites like Lorenzo Insigne, Kalidou Koulibaly and Dries Mertens out the door to bring in relative unknowns. Even when they had a sensational start to the season, thrashing Liverpool and Ajax in the Champions League too, the general assumption was this would be the traditional early promise set to be wiped out by the eternal chokers of Calcio, Spalletti and Napoli.
Perhaps the long break for the World Cup in Qatar shook up the schedule enough to avoid the springtime slump. Maybe the coach and team had become so aware of their faults that they finally started recognising those patterns of mistakes and doing something to stop them spiralling. Every time a stumble was predicted, they rode it out, shaking off the unlucky defeat to Inter by then hammering Juventus 5-1. Stunned by Milan 4-0 in Serie A and eliminated from the Champions League, but refusing to lose their grip on that huge advantage amassed at the top. Or it could just be making the most of the demolition derby behind them in the Serie A table, the only team with any sense of consistency.
Whatever the mathematical equation that cancelled out the historic failings of both Napoli and Spalletti, it is wonderful to see them both enjoying success at long last.
Twitter: @SusyCampanale
Grande Giuntoli! Congrats Lucky Luciano