No Excuses

By: Neil | January 19th, 2009

For the second time in three rounds Napoli has been outchanced and outplayed by a team in the relegation zone. For the first half of Sunday’s game Chievo looked like the team competing for a Champions League spot and Napoli looked like the side with the league’s worst offence. Napoli cannot blame anyone except themselves, and it goes deeper than Reja who can only shoulder so much of the blame.

At the individual level, I saw satisfactory performances from only two players: Lavezzi and, surprisingly, Zalayeta. Maybe Maggio as well, so that’s three. Everyone else had quiet or below average games. I honestly thought at least more players than the three mentioned above would show some fight. Sure, the quality won’t be there every single game but for the last season and a half I’ve seen Napoli players play their hearts out time and time again, but not so much in the last few months. Ever since November there’s been a very gradual slide in which the team hasn’t played a consistently good game for 90 minutes (maybe the Lecce victory was an exception). Some of our home games in that time frame, like 2-0 over Samp and 2-2 vs Cagliari, weren’t comfortable and you could see the problems start to crop up back then.

Even the normally candid and straightforward Reja seems to be at a loss to explain things. In his post game comments he seems worried about the season as the team is a shadow of the group that beat Fiorentina and Juve earlier in the season. The normally calm and rational PierPaolo Marino is also upset, calling the team two-faced and revealing that both Hamsik and Denis will be fined for their roles in Sunday’s game.

It’s hard to talk about a crisis when your team is in fifth place, but in the last five rounds Napoli have played five teams in the bottom half of the standings and with upcoming game against Roma, Fiorentina, and Udinese there will be a dramatic increase in the quality of our opponents.

There’s really not much to say about the Chievo game. Both penalty calls were correct, and Hamsik’s sending off wasn’t that big a deal because he was playing poorly until then and the numbers were evened up ten minutes later. Despite playing a bad game Napoli still had the score at 1-1 and were playing 10 vs. 10 and couldn’t outplay a team heavily favoured to be relegated.

Here are the highlights:

Although Marcolini was calm in converting two penalties, my Man of the Match was Sergio Pellissier, who set the tone for Chievo with his agressive runs that caused problems for Cannavaro and the entire Napoli defence. Sorrentino also deserves credit for a game saving stop on a Zalayeta drive but other than that Napoli made his day fairly comfortable.

If there are any positives, it’s that Napoli has always risen to the occasion against the big teams and I belive that won’t change in the ritorno portion of the schedule. Of course, in those games great performances don’t always transfer into points, but at least we can go back to being the underdog who gives the favourite all they can handle.