Here we go again. Time for the latest installment of my Championship Manager 3 nostalgia trip!
Last time out, we kicked off the 2000/2001 Serie A season at Napoli. Much has been expected of our new signings after a busy summer in the transfer window, but some of them haven’t quite delivered the goods yet.
We now pick things up in November, with the Partenopei facing a battle to stay in the European spots – and another battle to keep their Coppa Italia dreams alive.
NOVEMBER 2000
It’s fair to say I had mixed feelings at the start of this season. Yes, Napoli were in 5th place after seven matches, but I was probably the first Championship Manager in history whose team had conceded MORE goals since signing Sebastien Frey.
The young Frenchman had looked shaky in his first few outings, and after back-to-back stinkers at Lazio, his morale was understandably quite low. I decided to put former number 1 Giuseppe Taglialatela back in goal when we hosted Brescia, who were one of three teams in Serie A still looking for a win.
We would certainly remember, remember the 5th of November. Strikers Roberto Murgita and Gabriel Bordi were both back on target as we saw off Brescia by our new favourite scoreline – 2-0.
The Coppa Italia tie against Lazio was a bit more forgettable. Trailing 2-1 from the away leg, we struggled to create anything at home – even after the Biancocelesti had Paulo Sousa sent off. After 93 fruitless minutes, time had run out, and we were out of the c-
Wait… what happened?!
Okay. Let me get this straight. In the dying seconds, Keith Gillespie swung a corner into the opposition box and found midfielder Emiliano Bigica, whose shot cannoned off substitute Patrik Fredholm‘s bottom and deflected into the goal! With one of the strangest goals ever, we had stunned Lazio and reached the Quarter Finals on the away goals rule!
Or, as Sven Goran Eriksson might describe it from his team’s perspective: “First leg, good. Second leg, not so good.”
We were then drawn against Serie B mid-tablers Genoa in the last eight. Could this really be our year in the Coppa?
Fredholm was back in the starting line-up at Parma, as Bordi had just received his first call-up to the Argentina squad. Thunderbutt didn’t have as much luck this time, but it was Murgita who stole the headlines with two late goals in a fantastic comeback win. Parma keeper Gianluigi Buffon looked like a buffoon, and we were up to 4th!
We then recorded another impressive result – taking a point off Fiorentina. Taglialatela shut out Ronaldo and his new Viola mates, while Messrs Batistuta and Kluivert were left to sulk on the bench.
Gillespie’s solitary strike against Cagliari saw us finish November up in 3rd place – only a couple of points off new leaders Lazio. We had also planted one foot into the Coppa Semi Finals, as a Claudio Bellucci hat-trick swept Genoa away in the first leg of our Quarter Final.
DECEMBER 2000
We wouldn’t play the second leg of that cup tie until late January. In the meantime, we faced an away game against Genoa’s local rivals Sampdoria, who were in 13th place and had endured back-to-back 0-0 draws.
Make that back-to-back-to-back 0-0 draws for Sampdoria. As far as we were concerned, we were now unbeaten in five league games, but Parma had leapfrogged us into 3rd place.
A week later, though, we had surged back ahead of them and Lazio into 2nd! Backup midfielder Roberto Goretti scored and created the goals against newly-promoted Bari to leave us trailing only Roma, who had returned to the summit by defeating their eternal rivals.
We had the chance to go top of Serie A in our next game at the San Siro, where we also had the opportunity to complete a memorable double. We’d already beaten AC Milan there this season – albeit that was a pretty awful Rossoneri team which was barely staying clear of relegation. 5th-placed Internazionale would surely provide a much stiffer test.
It sure felt like it in the first half. When Deco gave Inter the lead on the stroke of half-time, we were looking toothless and out of ideas. But then I switched from the 4-4-2 to the narrower 4-3-1-2, and we overwhelmed the Nerazzurri midfield in the second half to eventually come out on top!
Murgita’s equaliser was his sixth goal of the season. The 32-year-old’s contract was due to expire next summer, but I rewarded his fine form with a new deal that would keep him at the San Paolo for an extra year.
In other news, after losing their first 13 matches of the Serie A season, Verona finally got a win on the board at the 14th attempt! Would you like to guess who that victory came against?
Roma had also won, so we remained 2nd at Christmas. Though the Giallorossi could only draw 2-2 at Parma on New Year’s Eve, we threw away the opportunity to go level on points with the champions – losing 1-0 at home to Torino. We were awful.
Bordi had drawn another blank, which meant he had now scored one goal in the last three months. I was wondering when (or if) he would return to his best.
Bordi’s barren run aside, we had little to complain about as the year 2000 drew to a close. Our defence was solid enough, and we were consistently holding our own against the elite teams, even if we weren’t blowing weaker sides apart as often as we had last season.
JANUARY 2001
Despite his Torino turmoil, Taglialatela had otherwise been quite reliable in the Napoli goal – and he was also in demand in the new year. Inter had offered us £2.9million, which was not enough for me to part with my number 1.
Meanwhile, Roma had made a big offer for Gaetano De Rosa – the powerful and in-form centre-back who had displaced Francesco Baldini from my starting line-up. This offer was more than double his value, but Napoli were already swimming in money, so there was just no need to sell.
De Rosa would soon be back on Fabio Capello’s radar, as we began 2001 with a HUGE top-of-the-table clash at the Olimpico. I took a huge gamble before kick-off – dropping Taglialatela to give Frey another chance in goal. The heat was on, as Sebastian’s namesake Glenn used to say, but could he handle it?
Daaaaaaang it.
I thought we had ’em when Roberto Di Matteo was sent off for a two-footed lunge on Bordi… but then I realised that Roma still had Francesco Totti. Even Frey on his best form would not have kept out Il Capitano’s header from a brilliant cross by budding hipster Eusebio Di Francesco.
The tropic morning news was definitely on for our next two home games. We only scored one goal in a wasteful performance against Lecce, which was still enough for maximum points… but that was one more than we managed against Udinese.
Seriously, how the hell did we not win this match? And what the hell had happened to Bordi since last summer?
Bordi was so low on confidence that he couldn’t even hit the target against Genoa in the Coppa. We didn’t need to add to our 5-1 lead from the first leg, but failing to score for the fourth time in five games was HUGELY frustrating.
Fortunately, a switch back to a classic 4-4-2 did the trick at Verona. Bordi watched on from the bench as 19-year-old Kabba Samura scored on his first Serie A start. Bellucci and Gillespie also hit the target in a 3-1 win over the tragic Gialloblu suffered an 18th league defeat out of 19.
And so we were right back in the scudetto hunt, looking to chase down Roma and Lazio at the top. Interestingly, Lazio had offered us £6million to sign our right-back Daniel Daino on deadline day. The youngster had signed a new long-term contract with us literally two weeks earlier, so I obviously told Sven to get lost.
FEBRUARY 2001
I hope Nicola Ventola would get stuffed as well. The Bologna striker scored his SIXTH goal in five meetings against us to leave us trailing 2-0 at the San Paolo midway through the first half. Though Bordi did find the net after the break, he left it far too late. That was our second home defeat of the season.
A rotten start to a rotten year continued when we went down 1-0 to second-from-bottom Vicenza. Are you kidding me? Frey had fried up yet another stinker – and just like last season, we were letting a European place slip from our fingers.
Of course, we still had the opportunity to get into the Cup Winners’ Cup as the cup winners. Oh yeah… I forgot to tell you who we were playing in the Semi Finals, didn’t I?
Those loveable clowns at AC Milan, of course! And naturally, we would play them THREE times in the space of EIGHT days, squeezing in a home league game between both legs! There’s some classic Championship Manager scheduling for you!
We really needed to win the first leg at the San Paolo. But with Bordi off on international duty for the 13th time this season, and with midfielder Fabio Rossitto getting himself sent off midway through the second half, the best we could manage was a 0-0 draw.
Thankfully, Bordi returned four days later to give us the bragging rights in the league. The Argentine ace scored his 50th Napoli goal from the penalty spot, which gave us a timely confidence boost ahead of a crucial visit to the San Siro…
…where it all fell to pieces. Oliver Bierhoff ran us ragged with two goals in the first half, and we couldn’t produce anything in retaliation. Milan advanced to play Fiorentina in the Final, and we now had to pick ourselves up again. That would be easier said than done, given who our next match was against.
Following our Coppa heartache, we went to Turin for a meeting with a much-improved Juventus team, fronted by Alessandro Del Piero.
I… I don’t want to talk about it. I just don’t.
Seriously, what the hell has happened to us lately? We’ve scored just six goals in our last 11 matches since the turn of the year… and three of those were against probably the worst team in Serie A history!
Our strikers don’t score, our creators won’t create, and neither of our goalkeepers can goal-keep! Once again, we have gone from dreaming of a potential scudetto to worrying that we might not even qualify for Europe!
On that note, I think it’s time to take a break. I need to go back to the tactics board and come up with a new plan, otherwise we’re going to find ourselves in mid-table again.
It’s déjà vu all over again, isn’t it?
Can a change of tactic get Napoli out of this new-year rut, or is another campaign destined to end in heartache? Please come back next Monday for the 2000/2001 season finale!
(And no more lame references to The National. I promise.)
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