Italy’s greatest ever goalkeeper, Gigi Buffon, used to say: “I’ve never seen a crowd score a goal.”
And yet crowds — a fanbase, the people — can make themselves felt just as much as players. They can play a role in a game, a season, in the climax of a title race.
This week, all of Naples wore blue. Every Neapolitan played their part. They played like No.10s. They put stickers on lamp posts, shutters, and walls. The adhesives showed Pedro as a saint. Naples is used to venerating its own, most famously D10S himself, Diego Armando Maradona. But this was new. The city instead beatified a Lazio substitute whose goals from the bench against Inter last week ensured their team remained top of the league.
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Banners also portrayed Bologna winger Riccardo Orsolini as a religious icon. He too had scored a 94th-minute winner against Inter to stop the Champions League finalists from catching Napoli. The sight of Pedro and Orsolini raised a smile. They kept spirits high and served as a distraction when the doubts were creeping in and jitters about losing a title on the last day beginning to take over. “We’ve been anxious all week and just wanted to play,” winger Matteo Politano said.
When Antonio Conte arrived at Napoli’s training ground in Castelvolturno to oversee the final preparations for Friday night’s game against Cagliari, the road was lined with fans. He got out of his car and decided to run like Rocky up the steps in Philadelphia, arms outstretched, hands touching hands, the energy transferring from coach to supporters and vice versa.
Pedro became an unlikely hero for Napoli fans ( Francesco Pecoraro/Getty Images)
As was the case in 2023, when Napoli won the league after 33 long years, the magic did not come from Diego Armando Maradona. It came from Naples itself.
Unlike last time when Napoli already seemed destined to win the league in February, this team needed a push to get over the line. They had taken the lead twice against Genoa a fortnight ago, and twice Napoli were pulled back. In Parma last week, the team drew again and played distracted, as if they were listening to Inter–Lazio at San Siro.
Conte was surprised by the observation his team were having a hard time of it. “How the fuck can we not suffer?” he said. His best defender, Alessandro Buongiorno, has been in and out of the team with injury in the second half of the season. Stanislav Lobotka, Napoli’s best playmaker, hobbled off a couple of weeks ago and hasn’t been available since. David Neres, the livewire in attack, only recently made his comeback and hasn’t been up to speed. Conte wouldn’t be on the sideline either on Friday, having been sent off last week.
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“If anyone has a solution,” he said, “please raise your hand. I give up…”
Give up? Conte? CONTE?!
Then, he lifted his head and declared: “But only at the end of the season.”
Instead of raising their hands and offering solutions, Neapolitans revved their mopeds. Late on Thursday, the city roared. Locals found out where the Cagliari team were staying and drove a motorcade by. Some kept going round and round, honking their horns, screeching their wheels, emptying their exhaust pipes. Others pressed their heels on the kickstand, parked up, and let off enough fireworks for a month of New Year’s Eves.
Naples didn’t sleep — so Cagliari wouldn’t either.
How could the team not get it done in this atmosphere?
Napoli fans in the build-up to the crucial final game against Cagliari (Ivan Romano/Getty Images)
On Friday morning, the city also woke up to reports that Kevin De Bruyne might be joining. “We like him,” Napoli’s sporting director Giovanni Manna said. “But today’s not the time to talk about the transfer window. It’s reductive for a team fighting for the title.” Instead of reduce anything, the rumours only enhanced the mood.
Conte was, as usual, not taking anything for granted. As a player, he had lost titles on the final day in 2000. He had also won them, in 2002, at Inter’s expense. Which was it to be?
“AVANTI SCUGNIZZI,” the pre-match choreography encouraged. Step up, children of Naples—the artful dodgers, the rascals and rapscallions. Go forth and conquer the fourth.
Twenty minutes later, those shouts turned to silence. News filtered through of a goal on Lake Como. Stefan de Vrij had scored. Despite fielding a second-string team, Inter were in front not only at the Stadio Sinigaglia— but in Serie A too.
However, as was the case in 2022, when Inter also took the title race down to the final day, once again they came up just short.
As half-time approached at the Maradona, Matteo Politano lifted a cross into the box for Scott McTominay, who hit the sweetest of scissor kicks past Cagliari goalkeeper Alen Sherri.
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“I forgot about the goal because so much was going on,” McTominay told DAZN. The stadium smouldered and steamed inside and out — the flares were red like lava, red like the cornetti rossi, the good luck charms Neapolitans wear round their necks, wrists, and on their ears, red like the San Marzano tomatoes for which McTominay has such a penchant.
“For me to come and experience this,” McTominay smiled. “It’s a dream.” The first league title of his career.
Scott McTominay celebrates the first league title of his career (Francesco Pecoraro/Getty Images)
His opener, Romelu Lukaku’s second-half clincher, and the clean sheet Napoli recorded (their 19th of the campaign) not only explained the win — they, in many respects, explained this team’s season.
The league’s best defence belonged to Napoli. Lukaku won his second Scudetto. This time, though, he showed another side to his game — leading Serie A in assists (10), not goals. McTominay — or McFratm, McBro in Neapolitan dialect — finished the season as his team’s top scorer and the league’s MVP.
Rom, McTom and Billy Gilmour didn’t do pre-season with Conte. The coach had to wait — and wait, and wait — until the last days of summer for them to arrive. Napoli had missed out on the Champions League and the money for them was supposed to come from the sale of Victor Osimhen. But Chelsea and Al Ahli were unwilling to pay his buy-out clause. In the end, Napoli’s owner Aurelio De Laurentiis authorised Manna to buy them anyway and sent Osimhen on loan to Galatasaray.
De Laurentiis could not go back on his word. He’d made Conte a promise.
Napoli’s owner had already tried to hire Conte last season, as a replacement for Rudi Garcia. Mindful of what happened at Tottenham, however, Conte declined on the basis that he wouldn’t have a transfer window to shape the team. And this Napoli team was, in his opinion, in need of a refresh.
After a shock 3–0 defeat to Hellas Verona on the opening weekend of the campaign, Conte did not tread lightly. Far from it. He said Napoli “melted like snow in the sunshine.”
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As such, a prodigio is how Conte believed Napoli’s title should be viewed. If not a miracle, then a genuine marvel. Listening to him at times this season, it has felt as if the club were still awaiting the first chants of Campione d’Italia since 1990.
Conte liked to remind everyone Napoli finished 10th a year ago. They were 15 points adrift of qualifying for the Champions League — and a full 41 points behind eventual winners Inter. Overhauling them, it seemed, would require him to go on bended knee and pray before Saint Gennaro, the patron saint of Naples.
Conte has now won Serie A titles with three different clubs (Francesco Pecoraro/Getty Images)
No team had ever won the league from as far back. Until Friday night.
Still there was considerable scepticism at the €150 million Napoli invested in the summer. Apart from Alessandro Buongiorno — their most expensive acquisition, and the outstanding young centre-back in Serie A last season, who was eclipsed, it must be said, by Riccardo Calafiori at the Euros — almost everyone else was at peak age or older. McTominay and David Neres were about to turn 28, while Lukaku and Leonardo Spinazzola have since celebrated their 32nd birthdays.
There was little in the way of resale value. It was indicative of a win-now mentality and, creditably, win now they have done.
Conte’s detractors would again claim this is par for the course. Napoli were not in Europe, didn’t seem to care too much about the Coppa Italia and, in contrast to treble-seeking Inter, could focus on the league all week.
But only Conte seems able to consistently make a virtue of these circumstances.
He also showed an adaptability that contrasts with the stereotype of him as a rigid coach. Conte changed for Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, just as he bent his principles for Andrea Pirlo at Juventus. He switched to 4-3-3 when faced with his old club in September and alternated with 3-5-2 depending on the opponent for the rest of the season.
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When Kvara left for PSG in January, Conte took it as a personal defeat. Unlike with Napoli’s skipper Giovanni Di Lorenzo, he had not been able to persuade him to stay long-term.
As if losing his best player mid-season wasn’t bad enough, Manna failed to land Alejandro Garnacho, Karim Adeyemi, and Allan Saint-Maximin as replacements. A half-fit Noah Okafor arrived on loan from Milan instead. Meanwhile, Neres — whose early super-sub displays persuaded some quarters of the media that Napoli wouldn’t miss Kvara at all — unfortunately went down with an injury the minute the January window closed.
Napoli’s title win was the fourth in their history (Francesco Pecoraro/Getty Images)
Napoli understandably slowed. From February to April, they won two of eight league games and lost to Como. Much of the criticism aimed at Simone Inzaghi and Inter over this period reflected a frustration at their inability to capitalise and run away with the league. But the grind of Super Cup, Coppa Italia and Champions League took its toll, and Napoli, in the meantime, were able to hang tough.
Their championship-winning points total of 82 figures as the lowest since 2011. The Neapolitans don’t care. “Ag4in” was printed on the cardboard Scudetto Giacomo Raspadori proudly carried along the running track at the Maradona. While ‘Raspa’ entered an exclusive club of players to win the league twice with Napoli, Conte stood alone. No one since Fabio Capello has led three different teams to the Scudetto in Serie A and in Capello’s case the titles he won with Juventus were revoked in the trial that followed the Calciopoli scandal.
Instead of flaming out, the fire continues to burn bright in Conte. The only thing cool about him are those glacial blue eyes, eyes the colour of the water in the twinkling grottos of his native Puglia, eyes tinged with same azure as Napoli’s jerseys. Few people, still to this day, are more Juventus than Conte and yet his reputation for being the closest thing to a guarantee of glory has made even their fiercest rivals accept him, no questions asked. The one question now being put to him is whether he’ll stay. De Laurentiis hopes so but risks losing him, just as he lost Luciano Spalletti. Conte wouldn’t be drawn on the matter. He wanted to focus on the present, rather than the future.
“It’s happened again,” Conte said of the title. “It’s fantastic, bellissimo. Honestly it was difficult to get to the stadium today. I don’t know how many people were out there on the streets. A little part of me said if we disappoint them, we’ll carry that with us for a long time, me in particular.” Instead Napoli will carry on partying well into the night, tomorrow and next week.
“We need to enjoy it with our people now,” McTominay said, sprinkling in a couple of words in Italian like basil leaves on a margherita. “What great champions do is they come back next year and it’s the same energy and with Mister Conte the energy is always… TROPPO ALTO! Always TROPPO ALTO! (Too high. Too high). So for us we need to replicate that and come back next year with the same mentality.”
Top photo: Carlo Hermann/AFP via Getty Images
