Resident Paisan: The Resolve Of Napoli
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Resident Paisan Clemente Lisi takes a look at one of the clubs dominating the game in Italy. No, it's not Juventus. It's Napoli. Yes, that Napoli!
What Italian club has been playing phenomenally well since the start of the season, is currently in first place, has a storied past and continues to draw large crowds.
Juventus?
No.
The answer is … Napoli!
The Serie C1 club has crushed the competition over the last three months in the hopes of returning to its former glory. Napoli’s fairytale season, so far anyway, has been a feel-good story about how fallen giants can slowly rise from the ashes as an entire city rallies around them.
That’s only part of the story.
Napoli’s season is an example of what can push a fan to cheer on their team. Crippled by nearly a decade of mismanagement and debt, Napoli spent much of the 1990s a pale imitation of the powerhouse that once featured Diego Maradona and went on to win two Italian titles, the UEFA Cup and Italian Cup during a four-year span in the late 1980s.
The team was relegated to Serie B in 2000-01, where they quickly sunk into anonymity. Napoli returned to Serie A two seasons later, only to fall back down again after one season. In August 2004, the club was declared bankrupt and all its assets – with the exception of its logo and trophies -- were liquidated. The SSC Napoli, which was founded in 1926, was no more.
There was a real threat that the club – Italy’s third most popular after Juventus and AC Milan -- would disappear forever. But an Italian law aimed at preserving the “sporting heritage” of a city kept Napoli afloat and the team was relegated to Serie C1, the country’s third division.
Enter Dino de Laurentiis.
The Hollywood producer, who was born near Naples, took control of the team and renamed it Napoli Soccer. De Laurentiis is known for producing some pretty bad movies (Flash Gordon comes to mind), even though he did give us Serpico, which is one of my personal favorites.
De Laurentiis has made sure Napoli’s “movie” has a happy ending, though not everything went according to script last season. Napoli lost a heartbreaking two-leg promotion playoff in June to regional rivals Avellino and as a result has had to endure a second straight season in the third division.
But De Laurentiis will not give up without a fight. When he took over Napoli, he outlined a five-year plan to get the club back in Serie A and competing in a European competition. I wouldn’t bet against it. Fiorentina was in Serie C2 – the fourth division – only a few years ago and is now vying for the Scudetto.
De Laurentiis spent this past summer unsuccessfully fighting a legal battle to get the club promoted back to Serie B, claiming other teams in the second and third divisions were in financial ruin and should be relegated in its place. The courtroom drama didn’t go the team’s way and Napoli remained in Serie C.
Despite its third division status, Napoli fans have again flocked to the San Paolo Stadium – with crowds reaching upwards of 60,000 on Sundays – after a period of several years where average attendance dropped to about 14,000. Though the loyal tifosi – those who sit in the Curva B stands and take trains to attend road games – never left the team, the rest of the city is slowly rallying behind its club, just like it did when Maradona was running circles around Italy’s top clubs.
Napoli fans continue to view their beloved team as a Serie A club, even though it clearly is not. That also hasn’t stopped Napoli from playing like a top flight club. In August, I watched Napoli tie Juventus and beat Inter Milan -- both with full squads – on its home turf to win the preseason Birra Moretti Trophy. Like the old days, it was a victory over the established northern powers of the Italian game and reminiscent of the Maradona days.
The team hasn’t looked back since – and there seems to be no end to the juggernaut. The club currently leads Group B of Serie C1. Whether Napoli can finish in the top five and win promotion at the end of this season remains to be seen. The fans are back though -- and once again dreaming of someday winning the Scudetto.
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from goal.com |
