The Neapolitans are plummeting in the standings and the coach is going through a (now) long dark period: 8 defeats in the last 15 games in Serie A. His responsibilities for the disastrous start of De Bruyne and his teammates
Now the crisis is full-blown, serious and definitive. The defeat in Venice, the fifth in the first nine games of the season, combined with yet another totally poor performance and the lack of ability to react to difficulties – a script already seen in other efforts this year – mean that the general alarm siren has sounded at Napoli. Nothing is wrong and there is no way to console oneself, not even by looking at the penalty missed by De Bruyne or the man of the match award given to the opposing goalkeeper on duty.
Napoli doesn’t work, they don’t have a playing identity or even individual qualities sufficient to overlook the lack of a shared score. Max Allegri ends up in the crosshairs, who should guarantee at least the overall plot: there are no alibis even for the Tuscan coach, called in the summer by De Laurentiis to take up Antonio Conte’s legacy. It doesn’t matter now to talk about the transfer market that didn’t exist, the limits of a deep but poorly set up squad, the series of injuries and the difficulty of relaunching players seduced and abandoned by the previous coach.
If Napoli is in crisis, with the enormous risk of jeopardizing the main objective of the season which is the necessary qualification for the next Champions League, the person responsible is primarily Allegri who is not understanding anything and who is also transferring this lack to the team. In Venice the only reaction was nerves after conceding Adams’ goal and considering that the lagoon players were coming off a record streak of six defeats in the first six matchdays, with a brand new coach on the bench, it’s the least that could have been expected.
The fact that it was De Bruyne who put the seal on the fall by having a penalty kick saved by Stankovic is the manifesto of the Neapolitan crisis. Allegri has placed a lot of emphasis on the Belgian’s experience but is getting stuck in obvious misunderstandings: he has often sacrificed other solutions to field him (Vergara, not in Venice where he was missing due to injury), he has kept him on the pitch even when the physical limitations were greater than the technical opportunities and he has forgiven him if the footballing visions were different, triggering bickering and misunderstandings.
The operation to hinge his Napoli on the former Manchester City midfielder is proving to be a failure which is dragging down the entire project. Then there is another thing to say about Allegri. The numbers are starting to be merciless. In the last 15 championship benches between Milan and Napoli, Max was defeated 8 times: it is true that the operation of connecting the problems of the Rossoneri’s end last year to those of the Neapolitan start is not entirely correct, but the streak is restless because the common trait is Allegri’s inability to find a solution to stop the bleeding.
The same thing is happening in Europe too: in the last 10 Champions League outings, between Juventus and Napoli, only one victory (Maccabi Haifa) and 8 knockouts. Too much to discuss bad luck, episodes, individual mistakes and to look for alibis. De Laurentiis should examine his conscience on what the club could have done better, but above all he should make his coach face the responsibility of not wasting a disastrous year so far.
