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With trips to the San Siro and Anfield approaching, Ancelotti’s tenure at Napoli is on the line

Adam Digby |

November 22, 2019

Currently sitting seventh and already 13 points behind the league leaders, the 2019/20 campaign has not been kind to Napoli. They were rightly seen as title contenders before the season began, a team who had pushed Juventus closer than anyone in Serie A over the last few years arguably looking more stable than any of Italy’s top clubs.

Indeed, with Inter undergoing yet another revolution as Antonio Conte took the helm and with Juve expected to take some time to adjust to Maurizio Sarri’s arrival, Napoli were perhaps the safest bet when looking for an eventual Scudetto winner.

Reality has been very different, however, and there is a very real sense that an era is ending under the shadow of Vesuvius this term. If Sarri had built a fine-tuned machine that at times played better and more beautiful football than any side in Europe, Carlo Ancelotti is currently at the wheel of a broken-down engine that can barely cough and splutter its way out of the garage.

They have lost three league games, but if defeats to AS Roma and Juve are perhaps understandable, dropping all three points at home to Cagliari is a perfect example of how far they have fallen. Yes, Rolando Maran’s outfit are vastly improved, but they are exactly the kind of opponent a title contender needs to brush aside – just as Inter did back in September – rather than crumble at the first sign of adversity.

A few weeks later, after Napoli were held to successive draws by SPAL (1-1) and Atalanta (2-2) before that aforementioned defeat to Roma, owner Aurelio De Laurentiis took the traditional Italian step of putting his squad into “ritiro.” That meant the players and coaching staff would live at the training ground for a week, a practice that serves as both a punishment and an opportunity to bond as a unit. However, on this occasion, it would backfire in spectacular fashion as a midweek Champions League encounter with RB Salzburg ended in yet another draw. Even the usually mild-mannered Carlo Ancelotti had had enough, refusing to speak at the post-match press conference then ignoring the club’s instructions and leaving the stadium to go home.

His players followed suit, abandoning the ritiro much to the chagrin of De Laurentiis who issued a statement the following morning. “The club announces that, with reference to the behaviour of the players yesterday, Tuesday, November 5, 2019, it will proceed to protect its rights on an economic, capital, image and disciplinary levels in every competent jurisdiction,” it read. “It is also made clear that the responsibility to decide on ordering days in a training retreat lies with coach Carlo Ancelotti.”

Supporters rallied behind those words, insisting the players were the ones in the wrong and after a dour 0-0 stalemate against Genoa, they openly began to target them. The wife of Brazilian midfielder Allan reported that their house was burgled while Piotr Zielinski’s car was vandalised, incidents which led to Lorenzo Insigne’s wife – who is from Naples – leaving the city and, according to the Corriere dello Sport, Kalidou Koulibaly hiring a bodyguard for his to look after him and his family.

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In a moment of both bad timing and a complete lack of awareness, Napoli also held an open training session. Unsurprisingly, the club’s Ultras used it as another opportunity to be heard, arriving with a banner that read simply “respect” before chanting “we deserve more”, “you players are mercenaries”, and imploring Ancelotti to leave.

Over the last week, further reports from La Gazzetta dello Sport and local newspaper Il Mattino believe that many of the squad are looking to leave in January with Dries Mertens, Jose Callejon, Elseid Hysaj, Faouzi Ghoulam, Allan, Insigne and Koulibaly listed as those potentially heading for the exits.

Ancelotti has been linked with other jobs around Europe, and things are hardly going to get any easier after the international break as they face AC Milan then Liverpool over the next few days. Even if they are able to somehow put the countless off-field issues behind them, on the pitch the team has been repeatedly carved open as the Coach’s 4-4-2 system repeatedly fails.

All too often the Partenopi are outnumbered in central midfield which in turn leads to the backline being overrun. The balancing act needed to make it work the way it did in September’s win at home vs Liverpool has eluded them on a regular basis ever since, their record following the victory over Jurgen Klopp’s men standing at four wins, six draws and two losses.

They have not won since October 23, have kept just three clean sheets in Serie A and conceded four goals in two Champions League encounters with Salzburg. The season began with them as title contenders, but to sum up the past three months; the club is threatening to sue the players who in turn have hired bodyguards and begun considering their future options, while the supporters would seemingly be glad to see many of them move on.

With a tempestuous owner and a volatile fanbase, there could be much more to come before this story ends. In short, as they prepare for trips to San Siro and Anfield, Carlo Ancelotti seems out of ideas and Napoli are in a self-induced crisis that shows no sign of ending any time soon.

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