With the 1-1 draw in Udine, SSC Napoli made the championship title in Serie A perfect on Thursday (May 4th, 2023). The architect of success: coach Luciano Spalletti.
The wait was worth it. Find Luciano Spalletti. Winning the championship title, the SSC Napoli coach has indicated in the past few days, is also personal satisfaction for him. Because he can shed a label that stuck to him in Italy for years. “Again and again it was emphasized that I didn’t manage to win the title”said the 64-year-old, adding: “But if that wait was the price of winning now with Napoli, then it was worth it.”
The Napoli championship is one of the most surprising stories in Italian football in recent decades. From moderately well-known players and with a small budget, Spalletti formed a team that was unbeatable in Serie A and the Champions League for months – and brought a city that suffers from many social problems into a frenzy.
Poor Naples of all places is breaking the dominance of the rich clubs from Turin and Milan that has lasted for more than two decades in Italy. “This championship is above all thanks to Luciano Spalletti”praises not only the captain of the 2006 World Cup team and native of Neapolitan Fabio Cannavaro.
Spalletti like Caravaggio
Perhaps the most beautiful homage to the later successful comes from the local competition. Walter Sabatini, sports director at Salernitana until the summer and at 68 a kind of doyen of Italian football managers, names Spalletti “Author of a Masterpiece”. Naples’ title win is given the conditions “almost surreal”. But, Sabatini recalls, Spalletti already did when he was with AS Roma and Inter Milan “Made the maximum out of the conditions there” and “Homage to the beauty of football”. But now in Naples, says the experienced sports director, Spalletti has it “like Caravaggio managed to paint a perfect work”.
Like the ingenious and rebellious master painter of the Baroque period, the coach, who was born just outside Florence, is considered to be headstrong and contentious. Like Caravaggio in art, Spalletti represents a bold new style in Italian football. And like Caravaggio, Napoli’s champion coach has had to work his way up the ranks and wait for recognition.
Spalletti “is a tactical genius”
Mind you in public, not with his players. Their tributes have gone beyond the usual kindness for many years. Former Dutch international Kevin Strootman recalls their time together at AS Roma as one of the most instructive of his career: “Spalletti is a tactical genius. The training sessions with him were mentally more strenuous than the games.”
Napoli’s goalscorer Victor Osimhen expressed similar enthusiasm in an interview with “France Football“: “Spalletti is a genius. And you haven’t seen everything yet! The day we implement 99 percent of what he teaches us, we will destroy every other team that faces us.” Antonio Cassano, the enfant terrible of Italian football who had his best days under Spalletti in Rome, can’t think of another label either: “Spalletti is a genius. What he did with Naples is a sporting miracle.” And Pep Guardiola ennobled Spalletti’s football as, “in terms of playstyle”currently best in Europe.
Long way to the top
The career of the now much-praised began almost exactly 30 years ago. In the summer of 1993, at Empoli, at the end of his modest career as a midfielder in Serie C1, Spalletti moved to the club’s youth coaching chair. Just a few months later, in an emergency, he was promoted to interim head coach of the professional team, managed to stay up and led Empoli to Serie A. The novice coach was suddenly on the big stage, which he had only seen on television during his playing days knew. In the class-conscious Italian football of the 1990s, the newcomer from the provinces met with a lot of skepticism.
In the meantime, Spalletti has turned the tables, he maintains his image as a social and sporting climber. “I’ve never traveled first class with a window seat, I’ve always hitchhiked“Naples coach describes his career as a coach with his typical pathos. He has had a more difficult path than his colleagues who were already successful as footballers. The championship title, says Spalletti, is now a reward “for all the sacrifices made”.
Social message on the sidelines
For Spalletti, his appearance on the sidelines is part of a social message, and his choice of clothing is no coincidence. In a popular choice of words, the coach explains: Sometimes he’s “ripped off” for walking around on the sidelines in football boots and a tracksuit, even in the Champions League. But, said Spalletti, “I know what I had to do to have these boots. I couldn’t afford them as a kid.” Spalletti adores his father, who died early, who supported his family as a hunting helper, leisure farmer and warehouse worker.
Against the background of his social advancement (“in life nothing is given for free” the master coach also has a sense of mission beyond the football field. Young SSC Naples fans felt that recently. At the training ground, the coach confronted young supporters and asked why they were there and not at school.
The message: Go learn instead of adoring soccer stars. He made full-back Giovanni Di Lorenzo captain, says Spalletti, because he “Has the best report card of all players”. Educational messages in a town where hopeless youngsters still hope for a career in the Camorra, the local mafia organization.
Winery as a retreat from Spalletti
Spalletti himself lives in Naples in a one-room apartment on the club’s own training ground Castel Volturno. Here, too, he is unique among the top European coaches. “A hermit existence for the championship”writes the “Corriere dello Sport“. On days off, however, Spalletti is drawn to his wife and three children in his native Tuscany.
A large winery in Chianti, which he bought with his millions earned in football, Spalletti serves as a retreat. His red wine “Bordocampo” (lateral line) grown there gets positive reviews in internet portals. It should also be suitable for special occasions. For example, to toast a championship.