Gab Marcotti joins the FC panel to discuss the most recent slate of Serie A action, as Napoli and Juve stay perfect in the league.
Watching Napoli at the moment, it's hard not to think back to the graffiti daubed on the wall of local cemetery when they won their first Scudetto in 1987. "Non sapete vi siete persi." "You don't know what you're missing." The style of football they're playing under Maurizio Sarri at the moment is enough to make tagging the brickwork entirely justified, regardless of the fact Napoli have won their first five games of the season for the first time in three decades.
It's so good that saying Napoli are playing better now than they did back when Diego Maradona and the rest of the "MA-GI-CA" (with Bruno Giordano and Gareca) front-line were in their heyday will no longer get you laughed out of the Spanish quarter. That team was knocked off its perch (at least the following year) by Arrigo Sacchi's Milan, which brings us neatly to Alessandro Vocalelli's editorial in Il Corriere dello Sport on Thursday morning, entitled "I even prefer Sarri to Sacchi."
Obviously Sarri does not have Sacchi's palmares ("prizes") -- not yet, anyway. Sarri got his shot at the big time later and hasn't received the same backing Sacchi received from a billionaire owner 30 years ago. But there is a palpable sense that he is on the verge of something genuinely special and is maybe even changing the game, too.
On a panel with Tite and Marcelo Bielsa at a coaching conference earlier this year, Fabio Capello recommended that members of the audience go and watch Napoli. "In football," he said, "there's innovation every 20 years or so. After Rinus Michels' Ajax, there was Sacchi's Milan. Then Guardiola, who has sent football to sleep a little. Fortunately Sarri is now waking it up again."
It's a mouthwatering prospect that October will see Pep and Sarri come face-to-face in one of the most eagerly anticipated games of the Champions League group stages. One imagines Wednesday's win away at Lazio will have done nothing to change the assessment Guardiola made of Napoli back when the draw was made in Monaco. "For me, they are one of the three best teams right now in Europe playing football," Pep said.
Thanks to Callejon, Insigne and Mertens, Napoli are averaging a remarkable 3.8 goals per game.
At the Olimpico, Napoli took your breath away again, scoring three goals in five minutes to turn defeat into victory. A game billed as a duel between in-form centre-forwards, Ciro Immobile and Dries Mertens, was, for a time, all about the centre-backs. After losing Wallace at the weekend, Lazio lost his replacement Bastos shortly before his partner deservedly Stefan de Vrij put them in front.
The Dutch international picked up an injury and didn't emerge for the second half; Simone Inzaghi had no choice but to play Lucas Leiva in a back three. Hardly the ideal scenario when Napoli's front three not to mention captain Marek Hamsik boast 305 goals between them for the Partenopei. "Don't make the Martians angry..." was La Gazzetta dello Sport's takeaway. Let that be a warning to you, Serie A.
Still, it was Kalidou Koulibaly, Napoli's centre-back, who got his side level. And before Lazio could even blink they found themselves 3-1 down. Jose Callejon finished off a 23-pass move. But it was Mertens once again who stole the show.
Through one-on-one with the keeper, Lazio's shot-stopper Thomas Strakosha must have thought he had done enough to deny Mertens after diving to his feet and seeing the ball ricochet off him and roll towards the right sideline. Without skipping a beat, though, Mertens chased after it, turned and hit a lob from outside the area that arced like a rainbow and ended in the back of the net. Pictured on the front-page of Il Corriere dello Sport, the headline on Thursday morning said he was "like Diego."
They weren't kidding, either. It was a time traveller's kind of strike, taking you back to a lob Maradona scored against the same opponent in 1985. "They showed me it earlier," Mertens said. "His was better. Let's just leave it at that." The bashful manner in which Mertens downplayed the extraordinary nature of his goal amused the Sky Italia studio. "I just turned and hit it," he said as if he does this all the time. Nothing special.
Mertens still didn't know what all the fuss was about when he reported for training at Castelvolturno on Thursday morning. "He told us it was a 'normal goal,'" said Koulibaly on Radio Kiss Kiss. "It wasn't. It was a world class strike." Having been the hat-trick hero in Saturday's 6-0 win in Benevento, Mertens now has 23 goals in 24 games in 2017 and gives Belgium manager Roberto Martinez a welcome headache. What should he do at the World Cup next summer? Go with Mertens up front or Romelu Lukaku?
A year ago, this wouldn't even have been a debate. But Gonzalo Higuain's sale to Juventus, Arkadiusz Milik's injury and Manolo Gabbiadini's inability to grasp Sarri's tactics led to Mertens' stunning reinvention as a striker. Out of nowhere Mertens finished the season with 38 goals in all competitions, combining for a goal or an assist more or less every 70 minutes: it was a record only matched in Europe's top five leagues by Kylian Mbappe, who made 11 fewer starts. Mertens improbably bettered Neymar, Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo in this regard and, lest we forget, he didn't start playing the role with any consistency until December. In half a season, he scored 29 goals.
"I'm just sorry we only discovered he had this in him at 28," Sarri told Sky Italia. "Otherwise he would have been a big name on the world stage for years and years."
Sarri has infused Napoli with an attacking verve that has fans dreaming of the title.
For what it's worth, Serie A's reigning coach of the year deserves huge praise for seeing what nobody else saw in Mertens. An adopted Neapolitan whom locals call "Ciro," Mertens acknowledged as much, insisting that he wouldn't be so prolific if it wasn't for the style of football the manager has instilled at Napoli. "We had to feed the little animal," Sarri said when Mertens returned to the starting line-up, and insisted on taking a penalty instead of Hamsik against Benevento at the weekend.
Napoli are averaging 3.8 goals per game this season, the most in Europe. That's more even than PSG, whose front-line cost €464 million, dwarfing the €19m Napoli paid for Mertens and Callejon to play with local lad Lorenzo Insigne. Wednesday's win felt big even though Lazio were unlucky on Wednesday and had to play with 10 men for the final 15 minutes after Inzaghi used the last of his substitutions to replace the banged up Sergei Milinkovic-Savic, only for Dusan Basta to also need to come off injured.
Lazio beat Juventus in the Super Cup and trounced Milan here a fortnight ago, so this game represented a stress test for Sarri and his team, who didn't want to go the same way as Inter did on Tuesday and lose ground on the champions. Instead, they came back from behind, just as they did against Atalanta, and have now won 10 straight in the league. You have to go back 17 games to find Napoli's last defeat in Serie A. Their consistency shouldn't come as any surprise to anyone given that their summer transfer window focused on keeping the team's best players and trusting in continuity.
Privately, Napoli believe this year is their year and the curious decision to rotate the side against Shakhtar Donetsk in the Champions League despite lowly Benevento being up next in the league, told you all you need to know about this team's priorities. They lie in ending a 28-year wait for the title.
James covers the Italian Serie A and European football for ESPN FC Follow him on Twitter @JamesHorncastle.
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Source: espn.co.uk