Spalletti: “Maradona’s protection is on the Napoli scudetto”

Luciano Spalletti to Dazn’s microphones is calm. It doesn’t look like he’s just won the Scudetto: “Those like me who are used to working hard all the time can’t rejoice. Happiness is a fleeting thing. Now I have to work again, start again. We should be able to stop but it’s a life approach …”. His joy is for others: “Seeing Neapolitans happy, smiling, is the greatest emotion. They are the ones who transfer it to me. The problem was arriving here, with the feeling of a city on my neck. They will express it in moments hard, overcoming them thinking about tonight. It was our responsibility to give him this enormous right to rejoice. One thinks of all these things and feels relaxed. He thinks, ‘thank goodness I did it’, but the happiness ends there”.

victory only goal

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They ask him if he had come to Naples to win: “It was mandatory, given the great coaches and great champions that the public of this faith has seen. Maradona played here and this result also includes his protection. It becomes difficult to go to him to say that it’s okay to have finished third, to have fought for the Scudetto. There are coaches who say, ‘it’s only been the third year that I’ve worked with this team’… We left to stay in the Champions League, the request was made to me was to keep the team in the Champions League area. The first objective was that, to keep it over time, we entered it, we could never get out of it. Then we even got to contesting the team and I didn’t like it. When last year I said you had to try to win they jumped on me because I said something too big But that something that went beyond was to get the most out of the players and have the mentality to go ahead this year This was the second half, the first was last year, when we played a great championship, played splendid games, without ever questioning the objective that had been asked of us. Here there have been Benitez, Ancelotti, Sarri, who played the best football in Italy, Gattuso who won the Italian Cup. And what did I come here to do if not to win the Scudetto? I had no way out, I had no escape.”

dedications

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Spalletti concludes with the dedications: “To the team, to the players. They deserved to be the ones to give this joy to the city. To all the public. Naples is for you! Then to all those who work in the team, to those who work ‘, to Matilde my daughter, to the whole family, to my friends, – she is moved – to my brother Marcello (who died 4 years ago, ed.)”. They frame Osimhen, the coach tells him: “He’s as tough as green pine cones, very strong, he has heart, availability for work, for the team. Even today he chased everyone, when he sees the ball it’s like little children, he chases it from all sides. If he deserves it, he’s done a lot of stuff for the team, the Scudetto goal becomes the right reward for him.”

stings de laurentiis

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To those who asked him whether or not he believed in the Scudetto, Spalletti underlined that he believed in it from the beginning, not sparing a stab at President De Laurentiis: “I tell the president that he must tell me and he must not tell you that I am staying . He always says he wants the best and this way he always falls straight. It seems that because he talked about the Scudetto in May I didn’t believe it. Now he’s talking about winning the Champions League… that’s easy. Ask the players what I told them the first time we were all together in the dressing room. We had finished third, second doesn’t count and we had to win. I really believed it. But a lot of work is needed, not talk”.