Serie A Betting: Boom and bust Napoli enjoying the good times again

Italian Football / Jonathan Wilson / 30 October 2008 / Leave a Comment

Jonathan Wilson on Italian football's original rollercoaster club.

Maybe it's time we started taking Napoli seriously. This has been a curious start to the Serie A season, with nobody really hitting form, and everybody seemingly just waiting for Internazionale to get on and run away with it. Nine games into the season five points separate the top nine sides. Inter remain fourth, Napoli continue to share the lead with Udinese.

Some of those sides hanging around at the top must soon fall away.

Usually, given their past record of false dawns and broken dreams, you'd include Napoli among them, but the longer the season goes on, the longer their fairy-tale goes on, and the more equipped they look, if not perhaps to win the title, then at least to qualify for next season's Champions League. This, as Napoli's film-producer owner, Aurelio De Laurentiis, commented last week "is like something from a movie".

They have always had a huge, passionate fan-base, but it took the genius of Diego Maradona to transform that into their only two scudetti in 1987 and 1990. Such is the Neapolitan sense of themselves as a separate entity that when Italy played Argentina in Naples in the semi-final of the 1990 World Cup, many locals supported Argentina to express their loyalty to Maradona.

Not surprisingly, when their saviour left, Napoli's form sunk. They still reached the Coppa Italia final in 1997, but the following year they were relegated having won just two games all season. Promotion followed, but then came another relegation. By August 2004, they were bankrupt, with debts of £50million, and were demoted to Serie C1. It was then that De Laurentiis stepped in.

He appointed Pierpaolo Marino as sporting director and, in the space of 15 days, bought enough players to form a squad for the start of the season. In January, he appointed as coach Edy Reja, a journeyman whose 25 years in management had taken him through 19 different jobs. They lost to Avellino in a play-off at the end of that season, but with crowds on one occasion reaching 51,000, there were reasons for optimism.

Last season they beat Milan, Inter and Juventus to finish eighth, which De Laurentiis seemingly considered a poor return for his investment in the likes of Ezequiel Lavezzi, Marek Hamsík and Walter Gargano. Reja began the season as one of the favourites for the sack, but now De Laurentiis has been heard murmuring about him having a job for life.

Three at the back is not a formation in vogue (as has been discussed here before, against a side playing one central striker - as so many teams now do - it leaves the defence with a marker, a spare man, and a redundant player), but so far it is working for Reja, despite a number of injuries.

The form of Gennaro Iezzo in goal has helped - and perhaps has papered over certain flaws - but he is not the only player to have impressed.

The 23-year-old forward Lavezzi has been exceptional, while his fellow Argentine German Denis was looking a bargain at £5m before he took his tally to seven for the season with a hat-trick as Napoli thrashed Reggina 3-0 on Wednesday.

They are not, by any means, the finished product, and had Maura Zarate not had an off-day in front of goal, the victory over Lazio may never have happened, but perhaps that is to miss the point. Napoli have never been a rational club, and the tendency at San Paolo is for fluctuations in form to be magnified by the emotion of a crowd that is as passionate and febrile as any in the world. One defeat swiftly becomes many as discontent sets in and erodes confidence, but equally when they're on a roll they can seem unstoppable.

A price of [28.0] for them to win the Scudetto may not quite be long enough to be tempting - particularly given the comparative lack of depth to their squad - but it is certainly not beyond the bounds of possibility that they could finish in the top three at odds of [3.05]. Beating Lazio is one thing; if they could do the same away to AC Milan on Sunday at [6.4], it really would be worth paying attention.