The season begins

By: Joe | July 5th, 2008

The 2008-2009 Napoli campaign began in earnest this week as Coach Edy Reja’s boys will spend two weeks in Jennersdorf, Austria getting ready for the season. The squad looks a lot different than the one that finished up the 07-08 campaign but that’s been covered already by Fortunato.

The preseason is more than a bit crowded this year with the Intertoto Cup matches, the standard friendly matches and the start of the season looming on August 31. At least Napoli will avoid the first three rounds of the Coppa Italia and will enter the competition in the round of 16. We have that going for us….which is nice. So this year we’ll avoid getting the fan base all excited with three Coppa Italia victories before playing against a top-8 Serie A side only to play bench warmers Francesco Montervino, Gianluca Grava, our 2nd-string keeper then wonder why we didn’t advance. Shocking! We’ll just remove any of suspense and play some Primavera boys against an inspired Ascoli side and bow out at the round of 16.

The schedule for our Azzurri is as follows:
* Tuesday, July 8 (friendly against local Jennersdorf team)
* Friday, July 11 (friendly against HNK Hajduk) 6-time Croatian Champions and finished last year in 5th in Croatia’s top flight)
* Sunday, July 13 (friendly against SV Hollenegg) – not a freaking clue as to who they are
* Tuesday, July 15 (friendly against FC Fehérvár) – won Hungarian Cup in 2006 and the first Hungarian Liga Cup in 2007….yeah, like I know the difference between the two. FC Fehérvár’s claim to fame was reaching the EUFA Cup final in 1985 and losing to a little Spanish team 3-1 on aggregate.
* July 18 (leave Jennersdorf)
* July 19 or July 20 – first away leg of the Intertoto cup (against either Serbian club OFK Beograd or Greek Club Panionios. Winner to be determined July 13)
* July 26 or July 27 – return leg of the Intertoto Cup
* August 2 – Friendly against Argentine giants Boca Juniors
* August 14 – Potential UEFA Cup match
* August 21 – Birra Moretti matches against AC Milan and Juventus (Inter backed out and was replaced by Milan)
* August 28 – Potential UEFA Cup match
* August 31 – Start of Serie A season

Here’s the list of players going to Austria: Nicolas Amodio, Manuele Blasi, Mariano Bogliacino, Paolo Cannavaro, Matteo Contini, Samuele Dalla Bona, Roberto De Zerbi, Gustavo German Denis, Walter Gargano, Matteo Gianello, Gianluca Grava, Marek Hamsik, Gennaro Iezzo, Christian Maggio, Daniele Mannini, Francesco Montervino, Michele Pazienza, Inacio Pià, Leandro Rinaudo, Fabiano Santacroce, Mirko Savini, Angelo Scalzone, Luigi Sepe, Luigi Vitale, Marcelo Zalayeta.

Conspicuous by their absence are Nicolas Navarro, Ezequiel Lavezzi and Maurizio Domizzi. Navarro and Lavezzi will be with the Argentine national team as they look to win gold at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Lavezzi will surely see a little playing time while Navarro is on the Argentine provisional squad and will be called in case of an injury. Kind of like the beauty pageant runner-up thing. Speaking of the Olympics, Pierluigi Casiraghi did not call up Fabiano Santacroce to play with the Azzurrini in China. That’s fairly good news for Napoli so Santacroce can spend more time with the squad. He may not have been chosen due to the fact that Santacroce would be suspended for, I believe, two matches. I still think Casiraghi is making a mistake here. Santacroce proved himself to be one of the best defenders in Serie A in the second half of the season. Oh well. The saga of Domizzi started late last season and has continued through the entire calciomercato. Rumor has it Domizzi’s wife isn’t settled at Napoli and he’s looking to please the misses. Domizzi has been linked with Roma, Lazio, Sampdoria, Fiorentina, Parma and who-the-hell-else. Marino will look to end this drama within the next week as Domizzi can’t just sit and do nothing. It should be interesting. More to follow later.

FORZA NAPOLI!