There is no current player more synonymous with Napoli than Marek Hamsik. It is not just because he is captain, or uniquely identifiable by his mohawk, or the fact that after 11 years in Naples he recently overtook Diego Maradona as the club’s all-time leading scorer. Hamsik and his family have been robbed at gunpoint three times in the city and yet he stays, recently declaring in his autobiography that he would never leave for Juventus, as his former teammate Gonzalo Higuaín did.
Yet the truth is that nobody looks more out of place in the latest iteration of this Napoli team than Hamsik. With both Maurizio Sarri and Jorginho departed for Chelsea, the Slovakian has been asked by new manager Carlo Ancelotti to fill Jorginho’s boots at the base of midfield, with mixed results, and it remains possible that Hamsik will be left out of the starting XI for Napoli’s crucial Champions League match against Liverpool on Wednesday night.
Things have been on the wane for a while. Previously a perennial starter, Hamsik was dropped to the bench six times in the second half of last season. This season, Hamsik was left on the bench for Napoli’s Champions League opener against Red Star Belgrade, and was not used at all in the league against either Sampdoria or Parma, with Gazzetta dello Sport declaring last month that Ancelotti is “still trying to understand after five games if Hamsik can be his regista. In the games in which he has played there, Hamsik hasn’t excited anyone.”
Hamsik lacks Jorginho’s defensive tactical understanding, and is much more effective further forward. For all his 31 years he remains a raw, unpolished entity, a sort-of footballing hyena, a snarling, physical force eager to sniff out a weakness and deliver a telling blow. A deep-lying playmaker he is not.
With that in mind, it is impossible to overstate the loss of Jorginho from this Napoli side and we have seen how the Italian has revitalised Chelsea this season. Of the 831 touches Jorginho has made in the Premier League, 762 have been passes. How do you tackle somebody that plays almost exclusively one-touch football? How do you replace him? It’s difficult and this summer was one of unprecedented upheaval for Napoli. Losing arguably their most important player, their manager and goalkeeper (Pepe Reina to Milan) has taken its toll, compounded with new signings Fabián Ruiz and Simone Verdi failing to nail down starting berths despite costing a combined £50m.
Napoli are not familiar with this sort of change. The potent attacking trio of Lorenzo Insigne, Dries Mertens and José Callejón have been playing together for five years, the centre-back pairing of Kalidou Koulibaly and Raúl Albiol for four years. So this change in personnel, coupled with Ancelotti’s experimentation in last month’s matches away from 4-3-3 to 4-4-2, has raised questions over whether Napoli are a weakening force – comprehensive wins over Torino and Parma have been book-ended by Saturday’s 3-1 defeat to Juventus and a damaging 0-0 draw away at Red Star.
Comparing to last season’s achievements is a tough ask. Sarrismo or “Sarri-ball” – Napoli’s bewildering style of play centred around one-touch possession with the ball and a high press without it – was so unique that it earned its own entry into an Italian encyclopaedia, complete with a doodle of Sarri’s smoking cigarette. Napoli finished with a points haul of 91 in Serie A, a record for a runner-up and a total that would have won the Scudetto in seven of the last 10 seasons.
Primo trofeo stagionale per Maurizio Sarri: la sua filosofia di gioco, il “sarrismo”, si aggiudica l’ambitissimo ingresso tra i nostri neologismi.
— Treccani (@Treccani) September 13, 2018
La redazione ha registrato il lemma in un articolo de «la Repubblica» del 6 settembre. Saranno contenti su @Sarrismofficial! pic.twitter.com/4J44GppxO7
It is in the Champions League that Napoli fans will hope to make the biggest strides under Ancelotti – they have never been beyond the round of 16 and fell well short of qualifying from Group F last season. Perhaps Ancelotti’s strength is that he is not welded to any one tactical system and the hope is that he will retain Sarri-ball in some form for Serie A while giving Napoli a plan B to play against the higher-calibre sides in the Champions League. The 59-year-old spoke candidly about this last month.
“How to face Napoli in the Champions League? Maybe we don’t have the experience that other squads have,” he acknowledged. “I don’t want my squad to have only one identity, I want it to have many. My goal is not to take apart the legacy that has been constructed here.”
A three-time Champions League winner himself, Ancelotti does have that experience his players are lacking, including two finals against Liverpool with Milan in 2005 and 2007. The same opponents travel to Naples on Wednesday and while it promises to be a tough night for Ancelotti’s defence, the game will be won and lost in central midfield.
And so we return to Hamsik and what feels as though it could be a watershed moment for him. If his midfield partners Allan and Piotr Zielinski – coveted by Arsenal – are sure to start against Liverpool, the Slovakian’s future is far from certain. Against the dynamism of Liverpool, selecting him and returning to a 4-3-3 is a gamble. Ancelotti still believes in Hamsik – he convinced him not to leave for China in the summer – but finding the right role for him in a Jorginho-less midfield is easier said than done.
