FOOTBALL: NAPOLI IS STILL NEAR THE TOP
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"Stop the championship, we want to get off!"
This imaginary appeal near the holidays, almost as it could be a gift from
Heaven, is launched by the many supporters of the fourth most loved team
of our championship.
At last, after two years of pains and projects
made and never achieved, Napoli is once again among the first in second
division, near to promotion to first division, that is, the position a
team with a glorious history like Napoli should occupy.
After the bitter relegation of two seasons ago,
the Neapolitans thought that their presence in the second division would
last only one season. On the contrary, both the club and its players learnt
the hard way how it is difficult to get back on top and how the reputation
of "impoverished aristocrat" has little importance in the second division.
Last year, not even the former trainer Ulivieri,
an expert in this field, managed to find a solution in the general chaos
of a season in which Napoli was thought to regain favour and which instead
turned out to be disastrous.
In the space of 38 Sunday matches the hearts
of the many Napoli supporters scattered throughout Italy, as a whole, suffered
from many coronary attacks; but the worst thing for a public who supports
his loved team with extraordinary passion was the fact that Napoli never
gave them the hope to reach the target of promotion to first division.
Indeed, the seesaw of results and performances
discouraged even the most passionate fans. Thus a club that in the golden
period of Maradona usually recorded sold out at the San Paolo stadium even
in the less important matches, had also to face the protest of its organized
supporters, a protest which was frequently expressed by failing to attend
the stadium. The club even turned to psychologists to try to explain the
fact that players had not been able to win at home for months, in that
stadium where Napoli reached rock-bottom the last day of the last championship,
when the last sad home match was seen by only some thirty people.
It was thus necessary to recover from this disastrous
situation, starting to re-create a team spirit. Fortunately, this objective
has been reached. In this championship, too, start was not too brilliant:
it was not at all simple to eliminate the negative memories of a very recent
past. But now at last, after 15 matches, almost halfway in the championship,
the Neapolitans are once again at the fourth place and therefore nearer
to first division. In the last 8 days, two successive victories over Empoli
and Alzano allowed the team trained by Novellino, a former player of Napoli,
to get nearer to the top.
This is a really indispensable fact for a city
that, in terms of importance, considers football second only to its beloved
patron saint to whom it begs favours.
And then, if it is impossible to stop the championship,
as all Napoli fans ideally would like to do to get promotion to first division
without further troubles, the gift everybody now expects from the team
is that it achieves its goal with no other obstacles. On the other side,
the Italian football cannot do without Napoli in first division, from the
viewpoint of both sport and economy.
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