Quagliarella Slumps, Bigon speaks

By: Neil | November 10th, 2009

I didn’t see Napoli’s scoreless draw with Catania, but from watching the highlights it didn’t look all that bad. True, Catania are second from bottom, but it’s the nature of Serie A that almost every game is difficult in some way, and even the worst Serie A teams can play well on any given day. Both sides should have scored with Morimoto and Lavezzi having clear breakaways, but in the end there was nothing major that separated the teams.

Auriemma highlights:

I want to write about the Quagliarella situation. It’s no surprise that he was dropped from Lippi’s squad for the upcoming Italy friendlies (Maggio was included though) but he’s also not guaranteed a starting spot at Napoli. When he was subbed against Catania he (apparently) got angry and started swearing at Mazzarri. Normally this would be a violation of team rules, but the club is willing to make an exception for Quags. Why? Probably because he’s a local and his loyalty to Napoli is unquestioned. That’s fine, but it risks creating two sets of standards. Lavezzi misplaces his passport and everyone attacks his motives and he gets a fine. Quagliarella swears at the manager and it’s all OK… that’s Napoli in a nutshell. Napoli is going to find that favouring certain players over others – for whatever reasons – isn’t good for the long term unity of the team. One incident isn’t going to do much harm, but you can’t create two different classes of players. There was a reported Italy-South America split under Reja, and it might have led to the team’s long and painful slide in 08-09.

New director of sport Riccardo Bigon has spoken about the team’s plans for the upcoming January mercato. He claims that the attack is going to be left as it is, but I’m not sure about this. Our two starting strikers have combined for 5 goals in 12 games, and Pia and Hoffer aren’t likely to get much playing time. I think Bigon is hiding the team’s real interests because if everyone knows that Napoli is looking for a striker, the price just keeps going up. In the world football market you don’t declare a position of weakness before going shopping.

As for his comments about Dossena, I can’t really read much into them. He basically reaffirms that Dossena’s track record speaks for itself. I think he’s using the same principle as above: if he declares a huge interest in Dossena, he’s going to be on the losing end of negotiations. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

Finally, Gargano’s injury is not as bad as first thought and he’s off at international duty with Uruguay. Gargano’s Uruguay play a home and home playoff with CONCACAF 4th place team Costa Rica for a place at the World Cup. In the early parts of qualifying Gargano was often a sub, but in the recent games he’s started including the decisive 1-0 loss to Argentina that saw Lavezzi’s team win the last automatic berth.