Antonio Conte’s team wastes the bonus at the top of the ranking. Inter approach thanks to the draw of the Neapolitans against Genoa, now everything is decided in the last 180 minutes
The short laborer syndrome hit Napoli. It is that psychosis that paralyzes the tennis player in the packet of an almost won match, when a few points are missing to close the speech and go to the shower. To Antonio Conte’s team the arms came to Maradona on the most beautiful, in the lead and apparent control with the Genoa of the boys who had nothing more to ask his championship. The result was a draw that is equivalent to the leaders to have wasted the bonus available, condemning himself to make full mail in the last two days against Parma and Cagliari.
It does not mean having lost the championship. On the contrary. Napoli remains solidly favored because the calendar is preferred to that of Inter, returned without one from the summit, and because the Neapolitans continue to be able to manage a single commitment while the Nerazzurri have their heads fatally projected towards the final of the Champions League in Munich next 31 May. But it is a fact that the planata on the fourth tricolor of Neapolitan history has become more difficult and from here on other false steps will not be allowed.
How and why it happened is simple to understand. Napoli has returned to slamming about the defects of this season, those who had already cost him some bloody draws like that of Venice: he built a lot, pulled a lot and finds little the Genoa gate. Behind he granted, risking a lot, and it cannot always be as good as it had happened in Lecce in the previous round. In addition, the performance anxiety recommended in the final to lower the center of gravity exposing itself to the risk, then concretized, to bring the enemy to the house.
The blues took the field knowing that the Inter of the reserves had walked under the flood of Turin. It is not known if the pressure played a role on the Maradona evening, it will certainly do so in the 180 minutes that divide the two teams from the Scudetto and in this Inzaghi has an evident advantage on Conte because he guides a group accustomed to impervious challenges. It is surprising how Inter continue to choose to remain attached to all possible objectives, even now that the logic would suggest to give up the championship to focus only on the Champions League final. The rapprochement makes this scenario impossible, therefore Lautaro and his companions will have to go to everything without ever detaching the foot from the accelerator: fascinating and risky at the same time.
To close three short reflections. The first is that evoking the arbitration error of Fabbri in Inter-Rome (rigor denied to Bisseck as admitted also by the Hague) makes little sense: it is part of the accounting of the episodes of a season and weighs like the others, wrongly or favorable. Secondly, the Interior Ministry through the Observatory is now managing a hot potato because the trip to the Neapolitans in Parma should be, logical, prohibited after the events of Lecce but becomes slippery imagining that he can engrave not on a championship party but on a sprint that is also played on the details.
Third and last, a very strong hug to those who write calendars in the Serie A League. At this point it will have to imagine a possible play -off, even if the percentages that come true are low, trying to keep together the legitimate expectations of Napoli and Inter. Which is up to being able to rest for the whole week before the Munich final, a showcase of all Italian football.
