Coppa Wrap-Up and Lavezzi News

By: Neil | November 15th, 2008

Napoli will now face Juventus or Catania in the quarter final of the Coppa Italia after defeating Salernitana 3-1 on Wednesday.

I was stuck at my University where I couldn’t find a satellite with GOL TV or a live internet stream, so I don’t have a match report. Here are the extended highlights:

This game was one sided from beginning to end, with Napoli showing the killer instict at the beginning that Reja likes to see. I thought the own goal was spectacular – the defender artfully directed the ball into the top corner with pace. A real beauty.

A couple more Lavezzi stories popped up this week. First, his agents are expecting Napoli to offer Lavezzi a new and improved contract. We went through the same situation with Gargano last year as well. Eventually it’s going to become a marketing problem for the club. If Napoli gets a reputation as a team that doesn’t pay players what they’re worth, we’re going to have a difficult time attracting better players. De Laurentiis and Marino may want to revise the way they invest money – we have no problem shelling out lots of money for transfer fees, but apparently wages aren’t as big a priority.

Lavezzi has also confirmed that Chelsea are interested in him, but he has no intention of leaving. Unfortunately for the club, Lavezzi is in a position of power – I think the club depends too much on him both on and off the field – and if his demands aren’t met, he will eventually go to Chelsea or another club. It’s not an easy situation for management to deal with, and if you simply bow down to his demands then it could set off a chain reaction of similar demands from other players. It’s a story that’s never going to go away, but as long as the team is winning it will be in the background rather than the spotlight. Here is the Channel 4 version of the story.

Finally, here is a good story about the rising stars of Argentina’s national team. With Maradona now managing the team, I’m going to try and follow La Seleccion as Napoli’s three Argentinian players try to find a place in one of maybe the most talented football country in the world.

Look for another post shortly with the Atalanta preview.