My Championship Manager 3 series with Napoli is now in full swing, as I’m about to kick off my second season at the San Paolo!
In the previous chapter, the Partenopei secured promotion from Serie B as champions. We will now kick off the 1999/2000 season back in Serie A, where this once-great club belongs.
Today’s installment will take us through the summer of 1999, as several new faces arrive in Naples before we begin our quest for top-flight consolidation. Will that be easier said than done?
SUMMER TRANSFERS
New season, new surroundings. Getting out of Serie B might have been the easy bit, but now Napoli faced a fierce challenge to stay in Serie A. We were now in amongst the big boys of Italian calcio.
Juventus were the team to beat, with Zinedine Zidane and co gunning for a fourth consecutive scudetto. Fabio Capello’s runners-up Roma went unbeaten in the league last season, while their arch-rivals – Sven Goran Eriksson’s Lazio – had won the Cup Winners’ Cup.
Parma’s all-stars of Buffon, Cannavaro, Thuram and Crespo would always be a threat. The once-mighty AC Milan were looking to recapture their past glories. Internazionale reached the Champions League Final last season (losing to Barcelona) and would be fronted once again by Serie A’s leading scorer Ronaldo…
Inter RELEASED Ronaldo on a free transfer? After the best season of his career?! Even though he had FOUR years left on his contract?!?! And now he’s gone back home to Brazil! Idioti.
Anyway, once we’ve stopped mocking Inter boss Javier Clemente for throwing the Mona Lisa in the skip, let’s talk about the transfer business Napoli have been doing this summer…
TRANSFERS OUT
| DATE | PLAYER | NEW CLUB | FEE |
| 14 June | Raffaele Sergio | Vicenza | Bosman |
| 15 June | Davide Mezzanotti | Piacenza | Bosman |
| 15 June | Oscar Magoni | Vicenza | Bosman |
| 22 June | Cristiano Scapolo | Vicenza | Bosman |
We didn’t release Gabriel Bordi, obviously, but we did allow four senior players to leave at the end of their contracts. Three of them stayed in Serie B to play together for relegated Vicenza. The biggest loss was right-back Davide Mezzanotti, who did come up with us to Serie A but would be playing for Piacenza instead.
TRANSFERS IN
| DATE | PLAYER | LAST CLUB | FEE |
| 29 June | Patrik Fredholm | Udinese | Bosman |
| 1 July | Marco Carparelli | Empoli | Bosman |
| 2 July | Amadeo Carboni | Perugia | £375k |
| 7 July | Cosimo Sarli | Nice | £180k |
| 9 July | Gaetano De Rosa | Bari | £1.8m |
| 10 July | Miguel Ángel Soria | Valencia | £1.8m |
| 25 July | Giuseppe Imburgia | Inter | Free |
| 10 August | Emiliano Bigica | Fiorentina | £1.4m |
Though we hadn’t made any money through sales yet, I did bring in £5.5million worth of talent – and a couple of free transfers as well. Only Lazio and Parma have spent more money in Serie A this summer.
If these signings don’t quite pay off as we hope, there’s still plenty of time – and money – to bring in higher-quality players. We’ve made close to £20million in season ticket sales alone, which should tell you how much spending power we have!
First up were a couple of former Valencia full-backs. Amadeo Carboni – who played for Italy at Euro ’96 – moves to Naples following a single season with Perugia. Carboni has just turned 34 (which makes him six months older than Francesco Turrini), so he’s clearly not a long-term signing, but he should last us a season or two.
Miguel Ángel Soria might last a bit longer at right-back. Joining us straight from the Mestalla, the Spaniard is an energetic and aggressive player who can play at centre-half if needed.
Talking of centre-backs, I like the look of Gaetano De Rosa. He’s pacey, strong, determined, a big presence in the air… and he has strong Neapolitan roots, having started his professional career right here in 1992. Welcome home, Gaetano.
Fearless ball-winner Emiliano Bigica has arrived from Fiorentina to strengthen our midfield options. I like his technique and his defensive skills, but his lack of strength is a concern. I’ve also signed the promising teenage midfielder Giuseppe Imburgia, who was discarded by Inter.
Marco Carparelli was a Serie A regular with Empoli last season and looks like a nifty winger… or at least I thought he did when I first signed him. 10 Creativity, 10 Crossing and 10 Flair are hardly amazing attributes, and his pre-season performances have been equally meh.
Patrik Fredholm is another young but high-risk free signing. The 21-year-old Swede certainly has the pace and the finishing ability, but he failed to score in 12 substitute appearances for Udinese last season. I hope Freddy will be ready this time.
SQUAD REPORT
Let’s now take a closer look at the Napoli squad as we head into our Serie A return…
Giuseppe Taglialatela will be Napoli’s first-choice goalkeeper for the eighth season in a row. The agile shotstopper made very few mistakes last term, but he’s looked a little rusty in pre-season since coming back from a groin injury.
Taglialatela is our vice-captain, but the tactically astute Giovanni Lopez will wear the armband most of the time. G-Lo will usually be accompanied in central defence by either the returning De Rosa or the spirited Francesco Baldini.
Youth remains the order of the day at full-back. Emanuele Pesaresi is a strong tackler but a little fragile mentally, so he might be displaced by the more experienced Carboni. I’m more excited by right-back Daniel Daino, who has made big strides in his development despite some injury problems.
Our weakest links are perhaps in midfield, but I hope Bigica’s arrival will change that. Until his arrival, our best defensive midfielder was Fabio Rossitto, who loves a long defence-splitting pass but loves yellow cards even more.
De Paula Gerson has been a little underwhelming since joining us last autumn, but the experienced Brazilian has the energy and skill to change matches. Please don’t ask what he got up to in pre-season.
Michel has been a revelation at left wing, and I expect to see more assists from the creative Spaniard this term. On the right, I’ll be interested to see if Turrini can continue his late-career renaissance, or if the prolific Massimiliano Esposito can take his place as a regular starter.
No prizes for guessing who our main men up front will be this season. The inspirational Claudio Bellucci got 14 goals last term, but even that looked ordinary compared to the 27 Bordi scored. If Gabriel proves to be just as explosive and lethal in Serie A, international stardom surely beckons.
If anything happens to our star strikers, we have a couple of solid backups in burly target man Roberto Murgita and new boy Fredholm. January signing Giacomo Banchelli has been so disappointing that I’ve dropped him to the reserves and put him up for sale.
The high-pressing 4-4-2 served us so well in Serie B, but we’ll probably have to be a bit more practical against stronger opponents. Dropping our central midfielders into the defensive midfield strata should hopefully give our backline a bit more protection, though we should still have the pace and energy to put together some direct counter-attacks.
The board’s expectations for this season are to “stay clear of relegation”. In plain English, that means mid-table. Finishing between 8th and 11th is a realistic target, though I’d just be happy if we’re anywhere above the bottom four when the season is over!
AUGUST 1999
After a valiant but unfortunate 1-0 defeat to Valencia in our opening friendly, I sent the boys off to Ireland for a pre-season tour. The first match went to plan with a straightforward 2-0 win over Cobh Ramblers, but as for our next one against Cork City…
I’m not quite sure what happened. We had utterly dominated a team of Irish part-timers that included Father Dougal, Danny La Rue, the anti-vaxxer guy from The Corrs, and some fella who used to play for Wimbledon… and we somehow lost.
A return to 4-4-2 saw a return to winning ways at Waterford before we headed back home and smashed Gheorghe Hagi’s new team Rapid Vienna. We actually faced a much stiffer test from Serie C2 side Benevento, who scored a penalty after a clumsy foul by Gerson.
All in all, pre-season was a mixed bag. While Bordi remained in fine scoring form and our defence still looked pretty solid for the most part, our new signings had so far flattered to deceive. Carparelli in particular was looking like the archetypal 6/10 player – he did the basics right but simply had no end product.
SEPTEMBER 1999
The new season began with us entering the Coppa Italia. We had knocked out two top-flight teams on our way to the Quarter Finals last term, but now we found ourselves attempting to avoid an upset – against our former Serie B opponents Lecce.
To be honest, we didn’t look convincing even when we won the away leg 1-0 – Bordi scoring an 81st-minute penalty after Lecce’s goalkeeper had been sent off for a professional foul. We then completely lost our way in the second leg at home, going down 2-0 to make an early Coppa exit.
Wait a minute… this screenshot has me confused. Did we lose in Round 2 or Round 3? [It was Round 2, you womble. -Ed]
Meanwhile, our Serie A return kicked off in the sweltering Bergamo heat, against one of our fellow promotees. Atalanta were one of the few teams we couldn’t score against last season, let alone beat. Could we change that and get our top-flight campaign off to a strong start?
We might have to get used to winning ugly this season, but I’ll take that! Though Atalanta created more chances than us in the opening hour, Taglialatela shut them out before Bordi’s low drive put us ahead against the run of play! We then clung on for three crucial early points!
No such joy in our first home game, as Bordi and Bellucci forgot their shooting boots against Udinese. They were even worse at Bologna, though a tight defence ensured that we were still unbeaten at the end of September. In the league, anyway.
OCTOBER 1999
So far this season, we had played two competitive matches at the San Paolo and failed to score. I expected us to put that right against a struggling Piacenza side who had scored only 29 Serie A goals since the start of last season.
At least we tried to win this match. It still took us 48 minutes to break the deadlock – through Bordi again – but Piacenza equalised 20 minutes before full-time with their first shot on target. Taglialatela seems to be either terrific or terrible right now.
On the plus side, it was an impressive debut in midfield for 19-year-old Imburgia, whose excellent passing ability gave us some of the penetration we had badly lacked. Maybe you’ll see a lot more of him this season?
You’ll certainly see a lot more of Keith Gillespie after the former Manchester United and Newcastle winger joined us for £4million from Blackburn. None of our widemen had convinced so far this season, so I hoped Gillespie’s crossing and creativity would provide some better service for the big two up front.
Of course, our next match finished in ANOTHER 0-0 draw at Venezia. So, just to recap, we were now without a win in our last five competitive games… and we hadn’t even played any of the big guns yet! Fantastic!
The first ‘major’ test was at home to AC Milan, who had the opposite problem to us – they scored a shedload of goals but couldn’t stop leaking them at the other end! Well, I guess we can’t be too surprised, seeing as Franco Baresi is long-retired and Paolo Maldini is now at Manchester United.
Yep. 0-0 again, as if Baresi and Maldini had never left the Rossoneri! We almost snatched a victory in the 93rd minute, but Fredholm’s goal was ruled out for offside. Maybe Silvio Berlusconi paid the referee?
We didn’t get close to beating Roma, as our Halloween trip to the Olimpico turned into a rocky horror show. The Giallorossi played us off the park for 90 minutes, and Fabio Junior’s double ensured that it would be an unlucky 7th game back in Serie A, even if Fredholm did pull a goal back late on.
So, with seven matches gone, here’s how the table looks:
Okay, let’s start with the positives. We’re four points clear of relegation already, and we have the joint-best defence in Serie A. We were also the penultimate team to lose our unbeaten start, with surprise frontrunners Udinese now the only side yet to taste defeat.
Of course, we also have the joint-worst scoring record, and we haven’t won at all since the opening day. Bordi (3) and Fredholm (1) are the only Napoli players to have scored so far. Bellucci has gone off the boil, our midfielders aren’t creating enough, and Turrini seems to have aged a decade since June. I’m really not sure what is going on.
It’s not time to panic yet. As far as the board are concerned, we’re still on track to stay up… but if this winless run continues for much longer, it might be time to finally ditch the 4-4-2 and try out another tactic.
Not 3-5-2, though. Not after what happened in Ireland.
If you haven’t fallen asleep on your phone or keyboard yet, I’d like to thank you for reading. Don’t forget that you can stay updated when a new blog post goes live by hitting the ‘Follow’ bottom and/or following me on Twitter, Threads and BlueSky.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to ask George Graham for some advice on how to make my team more entertaining…
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