Maurizio Sarri was looking unusually smart last Monday, shedding his Napoli tracksuit in favour of a white shirt and blue jacket to collect the 2015-16 Panchina d’Oro (Golden Bench). He had pipped Juventus’s Massimiliano Allegri into second for the award, given each year to the best manager in Serie A – as chosen by a panel of their peers.
Humble as ever, Sarri expressed surprise at his triumph, suggesting he would expect such a prize to go to the man who finished higher. But with mischief in his eyes he also looked ahead to Napoli’s match against Juventus at the weekend. “Are you telling me that thanks to this prize it will start 1-0 to us?”
Instead, the exact opposite would come true. Not seven minutes had passed on Sunday when Sami Khedira seized on a half-cleared ball, surged through a crowd of Napoli players, exchanged a one-two with Miralem Pjanic and side-footed Juventus into the lead.
For the briefest of moments, the Stadio San Paolo fell quiet. The din had been deafening up to that point, a crowd of 53,000 doing what they could to throw the visitors off their game. Thousands of whistles had been distributed by Ultras before kick-off, to be blown whenever Gonzalo Higuaín touched the ball.
This was the Argentinian’s first match back in Naples following his summer move, a betrayal that will not soon be forgotten. Fans held up sheets of paper bearing his name and the No71 – a reference to La Smorfia, a Neapolitan book in which different categories of dream are associated with digits, which can be used by superstitious types to play the lottery. Seventy-one corresponds, in local dialect, to “l’omm ‘e mmerd” – “the shit man”.
In truth, this was a tamer reception than some commentators had envisaged. When Higuaín first departed, fans responded by setting fire to shirts with his name on, flushing them down toilets and fitting them to public bins. Few have forgiven him since then, but perhaps fans have found it easier to move on because their own team has been so brilliant to watch in his absence.
Napoli began this match 10 points behind Juventus, but they had scored more than any other team in the division. In Dries Mertens, they had discovered an unexpected replacement for Higuaín – one who, despite only starting regularly up front from late October, had already struck 20 times in Serie A this season: once more than the Argentinian at Juventus.
Sarri has built a team that can be frustratingly frail at the back but is always a threat at the other end. So when Juventus opted to sit back in the hopes of clinging on to their advantage, Sunday’s match swiftly turned into a siege.
For the next 50 minutes, Napoli poured forwards – Mertens, Marek Hamsik and Lorenzo Insigne taking turns to carve out opportunities in and around the Juventus area. Their only failing was their finishing, with too few shots demanding a save from Gigi Buffon. When José Callejon did stick the ball in the net, it was rightly disallowed for offside.
Napoli, though, would eventually make their breakthrough with a goal of scintillating quality. Jorginho fed Hamsik, who squared the ball first-time to Mertens. He took two touches to evade Khedira before slipping a pass back to the Slovakian, who had now spun free of the pair of Juventus defenders who rushed in to close him down. Hamsik curled the ball nonchalantly into the top corner.
The game finished 1-1, although not before Mertens drove another shot against the upright. It was a result that flattered Juventus, whose lack of ambition after Khedira’s early goal deserved to be punished more harshly.
Allegri declared himself satisfied, this result maintaining his team’s advantage over Napoli while also keeping them six points clear of second-placed Roma, who won at home to Empoli on Saturday. He defended his decision to leave Paulo Dybala, Juan Cuadrado and Alex Sandro – players whose pace and dynamism might have lent his team some counter-attacking threat – on the bench, citing injuries and exhaustion from international commitments.
Besides which, to his mind, Sunday’s match was not even the most crucial one Juventus would play against Napoli in the first week of April. The Bianconeri return to the Stadio San Paolo on Wednesday for the second leg of their Coppa Italia semi. “Between the two, that game is more important,” insisted Allegri, “because it is worth a place in the final.”
Juventus hold a 3-1 lead, though a repeat of this performance might not be enough to maintain it. Their absolute lack of an attacking threat after Khedira’s goal was best summed up by Higuaín himself, who did not touch the ball once inside Napoli’s penalty area. Worryingly, for a team that also faces a Champions League quarter-final against Barcelona this month, he has scored just once in eight appearances.
Not that Allegri seems to be overly concerned. “Nobody will remember how Juventus played this evening,” he insisted. “They will always see whose name winds up on the honour roll.” Perhaps, in the main, that is true. The golden bench on Sarri’s mantelpiece, though, suggests that at least some people are paying closer attention.
Talking points
• Sometimes life just likes to have a laugh at your expense. Gianluigi Donnarumma will appear in the kids’ comic book Topolino this week, reimagined as Gigio Paperumma: a giant goalkeeping duck. The word ‘papero’, in Italian, translates literally to duck, but the female version – ‘papera’ – is used in a footballing context as an equivalent to the English word ‘blooper’. And that is exactly what Donnarumma was guilty of this weekend, allowing Gabriel Palletta’s (admittedly awkward) backpass to sail past his boot and into the net. This turned out to be a costly error, too, with Milan having to settle for a 1-1 draw at last-placed Pescara.
A moment to forget for Donnarumma...🙈
— BT Sport Football (@btsportfootball) April 2, 2017
Milan gift Pescara the lead over in #SerieA https://t.co/wUFqmGC5sk
• Napoli’s draw was good news for Lazio, who beat Sassuolo on Saturday and finished the weekend just four points outside the top three. Ciro Immobile got his name on the scoresheet yet again - his eighth goal in as many games – helping keep his team on track despite a tepid performance overall. Lazio, of course, have a Coppa Italia semi-final second leg of their own on Tuesday against Roma. They hold a 2-0 lead.
• Also keeping up their European push were Atalanta, authors of a 5-0 rout against Genoa. It ought to be an astonishing result, but the Grifone lost by the exact same scoreline to Pescara not so long ago. Fans protested against owner Enrico Preziosi throughout, displaying a picture of his face crossed out and a sign insisting that “Genoa belongs to the Genoans”. After Atalanta’s third goal, those in the Gradinata Nord literally turned their backs on the pitch, while continuing to chant songs calling for his departure.
• In happier scenes, here’s Luca Toni, getting a round of beer in for Verona fans at the airport after their win away to Trapani in Serie B.
Results: Roma 2-0 Empoli, Sassuolo 1-2 Lazio, Napoli 1-1 Juventus, Pescara 1-1 Milan, Palermo 1-3 Cagliari, Genoa 0-5 Atalanta, Fiorentina 1-0 Bologna, Chievo 1-2 Crotone, Torino 2-2 Udinese.
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Juventus | 30 | 40 | 74 |
| 2 | Roma | 30 | 40 | 68 |
| 3 | Napoli | 30 | 36 | 64 |
| 4 | Lazio | 30 | 21 | 60 |
| 5 | Atalanta | 30 | 18 | 58 |
| 6 | Inter Milan | 29 | 24 | 55 |
| 7 | AC Milan | 30 | 10 | 54 |
| 8 | Fiorentina | 30 | 10 | 51 |
| 9 | Torino | 30 | 6 | 41 |
| 10 | Sampdoria | 29 | 1 | 41 |
| 11 | Chievo | 30 | -8 | 38 |
| 12 | Udinese | 30 | -2 | 37 |
| 13 | Cagliari | 30 | -20 | 35 |
| 14 | Bologna | 30 | -14 | 34 |
| 15 | Sassuolo | 30 | -11 | 31 |
| 16 | Genoa | 30 | -18 | 29 |
| 17 | Empoli | 30 | -31 | 22 |
| 18 | Crotone | 30 | -27 | 17 |
| 19 | Palermo | 30 | -38 | 15 |
| 20 | Pescara | 30 | -37 | 13 |
