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Gennaro Gattuso’s debut as Napoli manager had to be delayed by half an hour on Saturday after pieces of the Stadio San Paolo’s roof broke off amid a heavy rainstorm. When the game against Parma finally did begin, it took only four more minutes for his team to start to come apart
A throw-in for the visitors inside their own half looked innocuous enough. The ball was launched towards Parma’s target man, Andreas Cornelius, but sailed clean over his head. It ought to have been straightforward for the Napoli centre-back Kalidou Koulibaly to bring it under control. But he misjudged the bounce, leaving space for Parma’s teenage winger Dejan Kulusevski to sprint inside and steal possession. Koulibaly chased to the edge of the penalty area before falling face-first onto wet turf. Kulusevski finished coolly. Injury was added to insult as the defender limped off with a thigh strain.
So much for the new-manager bounce. It was hard to imagine a worse start than this for Gattuso, who had taken over from Carlo Ancelotti just four days earlier. Napoli thrashed Genk 4-0 in their final Champions League match before the switch, but remained without a win in Serie A for almost two months – since beating Verona on 19 October.
How could this team fall so far, so fast? The mood had been buoyant in the summer, Ancelotti adamant that Napoli were ready to compete for the Scudetto. Hirving Lozano became the club’s record signing as he joined from PSV in a €42m deal. Kostas Manolas arrived from Roma to partner Koulibaly – voted as Serie A’s best defender in 2018-19 – at centre-back.
Ancelotti was popular. He might not have led Napoli to 91 points like his predecessor, Maurizio Sarri, but he had kept them in second place domestically while delivering some thrilling nights in Europe. Besides, how could anyone not fall for the sort of manager who stops to help a fan fix his bike outside the training ground, or hides in the crowd at a player Q&A session to deliver questions in his not-very-undercover persona, “Carlo from Reggiolo”?
By October, however, the mood was starting to change. Ancelotti dropped Lorenzo Insigne for his team’s first game against Genk. Local media claimed that he was sending a message to his captain regarding a lack of application in training. But the player was frustrated, too, with the manager’s insistence on a 4-4-2 formation, having always done his best work on the left of attack in Sarri’s 4-3-3.
Within a month, everything unravelled. Following a 2-1 defeat to Roma, Napoli’s owner, Aurelio De Laurentiis, insisted that the team be sent into ritiro – a type of mandatory midseason training camp. Ancelotti upheld the decision while openly acknowledging that he did not agree with it. It lasted for three days, before players rebelled in the wake of the 1-1 draw against Salzburg.
That mutiny was a tipping point. De Laurentiis’s son, Edoardo, had gone to the changing room after the game to inform players that the ritiro would continue, but was met with a furious response that – according to reports – almost got physical. Ancelotti toed the line, returning to the training base together with his coaching staff, but his lukewarm public stance and inability to keep the players in check were a disappointment to his employer.
The writing was on the wall for Ancelotti long before his sacking was announced. He carried the can for Napoli’s hugely disappointing form, though he is certainly not the only person deserving of blame. Tactical mistakes were made. The usage of Insigne has already been mentioned but perhaps even more damning was the poor performance of the Koulibaly-Manolas partnership: only two of Serie A’s top 11 teams have conceded more than Napoli. A familiar criticisms from previous stops on Ancelotti’s coaching journey – that he does not push players hard enough in training – has resurfaced in recent weeks.
Yet the overbearing influence of De Laurentiis is impossible to ignore. Two weeks before imposing his ritiro, the owner had given an interview to Sky Sport in which he criticised Insigne’s attitude, suggested that Koulibaly would be sold and accused Dries Mertens and José Callejon – both in the last year of their contracts – of being less interested in football than the possibility of getting rich in China.
Premier Sports ?
(@PremierSportsTV)? PARMA WIN IT IN STOPPAGE TIME!
?? The Crociati deliver a deadly, trademark counter, and Gervinho and Kulusevski combine to get the winner for the away team! pic.twitter.com/DL0UindE7C
Gattuso is under no illusions as to the nature of the challenge before him. At his introductory press conference, he implored reporters not to compare his coaching acumen with that of Ancelotti – his former mentor. Yet Napoli hope he can bring something different: a commitment to hard graft, certainly, but also a return to 4-3-3. Gattuso had some success with the formation during his first season, especially at Milan.
Saturday’s game against Parma suggested that nothing is likely to come easy. Napoli did eventually pull level, Arkadiusz Milik heading home from a Mertens cross in the 64th minute. The Belgian had begun on the bench, making room for the Polish striker to start with Insigne and Callejon on either flank.
They were already grateful by that point, however, to their goalkeeper Alex Meret for keeping them in the game. Fans were reminded that Sarri’s departure is not the only thing to have changed over the last year and a half. Gattuso has no natural replacement for Jorginho in a three-man midfield, with Allan – who started in the central role – far more adept at breaking up play than building it.
In second-half injury-time, Parma snatched a winner. Once again Kulusevski capitalised on a Napoli player’s slip, storming forward and exchanging passes with Gervinho, the last of which freed the Ivorian up to side-foot home.
It was an impressive win for Parma, and another brilliant performance from Kulusevski in what is becoming a breakout campaign. The Swede’s acceleration and physical power are eye-catching but the composure he showed in waiting for his team-mate to find space before releasing him at such a decisive moment in the game was striking as well.
Still, this was a worrying result for Napoli. Parting ways with Ancelotti felt like an admission of defeat, an acceptance that the team could no longer pretend to pursue the silverware he had talked of in the summer. Gattuso’s targets will be more modest: to restore some harmony and get them back into the top four. For now, even those feel distant enough.
Genoa 0-1 Sampdoria, Napoli 1-2 Parma, Brescia 3-0 Lecce, Fiorentina 1-1 Internazionale, Roma 3-1 Spal, Juventus 3-1 Udinese, Bologna 2-1 Atalanta, Milan 0-0 Sassuolo, Verona 3-3 Torino
Talking points
• Kulusevski is on loan at Parma from Atalanta by the way, so you can mark that down as another academy success story for La Dea. He wasn’t the only 19-year-old to make headlines this week, though, with Dusan Vlahovic running half the length of the pitch for a brilliant injury-time goal that earned Fiorentina a draw against Inter.
• That draw means Juventus are back on level points with Inter at the top. Maurizio Sarri sent Juventus out for the first time with Cristiano Ronaldo, Gonzalo Higuaín and Paulo Dybala all starting together in a front three, and the combinations looked pretty good as they rolled over Udinese 3-1. It’s still a little hard to know what to make of that, though, because Udinese are dreadful.
• If a banana taped to a wall is worth $120,000, then how much is the boot that Manolo Gabbiadini used to score the winner in the Derby della Lanterna worth?
• Brescia without Eugenio Corini as manager: played 3, lost 3, scored 0, conceded 10. Brescia since reappointing Corini: played 2, won 2, scored 4, conceded 0.
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