Not Enough Defenders vs. Inter: Match Preview

By: Neil | April 25th, 2009

The one danger of playing three at the back is that you’re only going to carry about six true defenders in the squad. For Napoli, it’s that time of year where injuries and suspensions have piled up and we may need to play defensive midfielders as emergency defenders in order to field a 3-5-2. Cannavaro is supsended for five yellows, so he’s out for sure. Rinaudo and Vitale are injured and miss out. Santacroce strained his ankle in practice, so he’s wounded, but has been included in the squad. Grava has also been inlcuded in the squad despite suffering the flu. Our only completely healthy defenders are Contini and Aronica. We’re also short of defensive midfielders. Maggio and Gargano are both done for the season, so our third defender will be either an injured Santacroce, a flu stricken Grava, or Montervino. If any Napoli fans want Francesco Montervino to start as one of three defenders against Inter, please make your case in the comments section.

To top it all off, the team is being linked with buying more attacking players in the off season. Apparently a deal for Floccari has already been agreed, and now we’re being linked with Real Madrid ~~midfielder~~ flop Rafael Van der Vaart. In the last game, Cagliari was missing two of their best attacking players in Acquafresca and Conti and they still pierced our defence after just five minutes. But hey, our defence is fine, right? In Donadoni’s five games in charge the other team has scored first half goals in three of them. In those games, totalling 450+ minutes, Napoli has not lead once. fact, we’ve been shut out three times in those five games, twice at home. But the problem is clearly that we don’t have a player like Van der Vaart. If only he would join in the offseason, our record would be drastically better, no?

I think we need to overhaul the team. Adding one or two high profile attacking players is not going to solve all of our problems. We need to bring in defenders who are going to play clear roles. Is Donadoni going to stick with the 3-5-2? If so, we need someone to back up Santacroce and we need somone better than Contini on the left. If he’s going to change to a 4-4-2 or a 4-2-3-1, why not change to four at the back now? Use the last six games of the season to get players accustomed to the positions they’re going to play next year anyways.

I don’t like the direction of the team right now. Clearly we need a target man to play along Lavezzi, and Floccari fits that description. But how good is he? Why is he only entering his prime at 26 or 27 years old? I understand there are a lot of late bloomers in calcio, but how do you know if a player is a late bloomer or just enjoys a few prime years in the middle of a career? Floccari has never played in Europe, hasn’t yet broken into the the Italian team, but apparently he’s one of the hottest commodities for Italian clubs. I don’t get it. I mean, he’s pretty good, there’s no questions about that, but if he’s that good what was he doing stuck in the lower leagues for most of his early career? Anyways, that’s my rant. If Floccari is simply a late bloomer he could be a great signing, but it could also be that the last two years at Atalanta are the highlights of his career.

On to the Inter game. Here is our projected lineup:

Bucci – Grava, Contini, Aronica – Montervino, Blasi, Pazienza, Hamsik, Mannini – Zalayeta, Lavezzi

Inter projected lineup:

Julio Cesar – Santon, Cordoba, Samuel, Chivu – Zanetti, Cambiasso, Muntari – Stankovic – Ibrahimovic, Balotelli

It will be a miracle to get a point from this game. Here are highlights of the previous meeting at the San Siro, a 2-1 Inter victory with some great goals:

Let’s hope this game has the same quality of goals, or at least something worth watching. One final note: D’Agostino scored twice (again) today. It seems like his price just keeps going up.