De Laurentiis Turns Down Reja’s Resignation

By: Neil | February 24th, 2009

Napoli 0 Genoa 1
First, some apologies are in order. This game was not the posticipo as I had written in the preview. The email I got from Telelatino listed the game being shown live at 2:30 Eastern. Of course, there was no posticipo last week – does anybody know why? – and Telelatino showed the game on tape delay. When I logged in to Soccernet at around 11:00 am Eastern on Sunday to check the other Serie A scores, I was a little upset to discover that the Napoli game had already been played, and that it was another loss for the Vesuviani. The second apology is for not posting a match report earlier. Unfortunately, it was the same mediocre performance as in previous weeks and I am a little fed up with recapping Napoli’s disappointing results. Of course there is no shame in losing to a great team like Genoa, even at home, but Napoli showed very little of its trademark fight, especially after falling behind.

For those of you who missed the game, here are some highlights:

The difference in the game was of course the forwards: Jankovic took his chance very well for the game’s only goal. Denis missed the net with an early header and botched a pass to Lavezzi when the two were moving towards goal with only one Genoa defender. Normally those two missed chances for Napoli wouldn’t be so costly, but very little else happened offensively. Lavezzi was fairly quiet, and I think he is a little worn out physically at the moment. Unfortunately he’s so valuable we can’t really give him any rest, while Genoa was able to switch Mesto and Palladino with Jankovic and Sculli. Another great tactical move by Gasperini.

Man of the Match for me was Thiago Motta. Not only did he provide an accurate pass for Jankovic to score the goal, he also ran Genoa’s midfield for 90 minutes and made sure that Genoa didn’t lose the game in the midfield. Gasperini gets much of the credit for Genoa’s success, but in Milito, Thiago Motta, and Jankovic, they picked up some great players in the off season last year. It seems that everyone at Genoa is doing their job, and the team will be hard to beat for the remainder of the season.

Maybe more important than the game are the events which took place after in the Napoli dressing room. President Aurelio De Laurentiis and Director Pierpaolo Marino went to the Napoli locker room to hold an emergency meeting with Reja and the players. I realize that many of the goal.com reports are speculation or rumours, but given Napoli’s current situation it seems likely that these events took place in some form or other.

Apparently during the meeting Edy Reja told the players and the management team, “I can leave if I’m Napoli’s problem.” However, the idea of resignation was turned down by De Laurentiis. This may have been because the team does not have a ready made replacement. A whole bunch of names like Antonio Conte, Delio Rossi, Alberto Zaccheroni, Roberto Donadoni, and Luigi De Canio have been linked with a move to the Napoli bench. Even before the situation reached a crisis it looked like Reja would be replaced at the end of the year, but I don’t think the management thought it would come to firing Reja before then.

At this point, I’m going to assume that if the players had lost confidence in Reja and wanted him out it would have been communicated in the locker room in front of Marino and DeLa. So apparently the players are at least a little bit loyal to Reja, and the problems go deeper than the allenatore. A couple of things have been mentioned over the course of the season that relate to each other: the physical condition of the players, and some off the field discipline i.e. late night partying.

Recently some delegates of Napoli fans were allowed inside the training ground at Castelvolturno to question the players. After the loss to Genoa there had been some protests outside the San Paolo and it seems like the Societa is at least willing to listen to various groups of supporters rather than see formal protests. I’m not sure how the fans can change the players’ approach, but it was worth trying if only to satisfy the fans so there won’t be any more protests outside the stadium or jeering inside during games.

Where does this leave things now? To be honest I have no idea. If I suggested that Napoli couldn’t qualify for Europe this season I would be accused of being a pessimist. Realistically, though, the team is not in good shape right now. Even if we managed a good string of results our next three games – Juve away, Lazio home, Reggina away – there is still a lot of work to do. There is much more parity in the leauge for positions 4-10, and unless Inter or Juve win the Coppa Italia only 5th and 6th will qualify for the Europa league. Maybe the team needs to try reverse psychology. There is so much pressure each game to get that elusive win. Maybe it’s better to forget about the short term goal of getting a result and worry about whatever is needed for long term success. Perhaps the team is trying too hard, and when a good scoring opportunity comes there is so much pressure to convert it.

I still don’t like the structure of the team for a 3-5-2 formation. Marino has bought some great players but he hasn’t made the team balanced in every position. I’m not sure if Datolo is the answer for the left wing, and Cannavaro clearly needs a rest, but we have nobody other than Rinaudo to play in the centre. As the Mirko Savini episode demonstrated, the club is asking a lot of players to play out of their natural position.

It seems that Marino has some rivals for the best transfer guru in Serie A. Earlier I noted how Genoa has brought in a lot of key players recently, and it looks like Fiorentina’s Pantaleo Corvino is also doing great business. When it was pointed out that ex-Fiorentina striker Pazzini has scored four goals in five games at Samp, Corvino basically said I got $9 million Euro for a player who didn’t fit in at Fiorentina. That sounds like someone who is confident of what he is doing and happy with the direction of his team.

That is all I can think of for now, but if you have any insights or any special news items that I’ve missed please leave a comment.