2023-08-18 04:05:00
Rudi Garcia can thank Roberto Mancini. By resigning from his post as coach of the Nazionale a week before the start of the 2023-24 Championship, the former Italian international relegated to the background, even to the third plan, the debut of Garcia at the controls of Naples at the promoted Frosinone SATURDAY.
Because to succeed Mancini, it is the predecessor of the French technician on the bench of Napoli, Luciano Spalletti, who has the favors of the Italian Federation (FIGC).
As Spalletti is still under contract with Napoli, all of Napoli and especially the club’s ubiquitous president-owner Aurelio De Laurentiis, have their say in this soap opera.
While its president scraps with the FIGC about the three million compensation claimed to free Spalletti, Garcia, 59, takes full advantage of this diversion.
This relative calm should not last and Garcia, who knows Serie A well for having coached AS Roma from 2013 to 2016, knows it perfectly.
Coveted Osimhen
As they showed on May 4, the evening of the third Scudetto which ended a 33-year wait, Napoli supporters, among the most passionate and boiling in Italy, are quick to eruptions of joy that can last days.
Any other result than first place on the evening of May 26, 2024 would be a failure for Garcia.
De Laurentiis warned him: “My dream is to repeat last year’s extraordinary season. Dreams are the salt of life, you always have to put a little salt in life,” the film producer recently poetized.
In 2022-23, Napoli flew over the league and thrilled with their attacking football, taking the lead straight away with a ten-game winning streak between September and November, to finish 16 points ahead of runners-up Lazio. .
Despite the fears of the supporters, and to the greatest relief of Garcia, the workforce is almost unchanged.
The Nigerian Victor Osimhen (26 goals) stayed and should even extend despite the interest of European leaders and a wonderful Saudi offer, just like his partner in attack, the Georgian Khvicha Kvaratskhelia.
The only European trophy dates back to 1989
Only the defense seems weakened with the departure for Bayern Munich of South Korean Kim Min-jae, voted best defender in Serie A.
Very discreet in the press since his arrival in Naples despite the numerous requests for interviews received by the Napoli communication department, Garcia, during two long and demanding pre-season training courses far from Naples, hammered out a message in the form of a warning: “We are starting from zero”.
This was what he confided to AFP after his appointment in June: “The fact of having won the title, it must give confidence to the players, because they have demonstrated that they were able to do it. But then, we must not believe that because we are Italian champions, it will be enough to enter the field to win the matches”.
Garcia, finalist of the 2018 Europa League with Marseille and semi-finalist of the 2020 Champions League with Lyon, must also meet the immense expectations of its president and the tifosi on the European scene.
Napoli’s only European trophy, the C3 which was still called the UEFA Cup, dates back to 1989 thanks to Diego Maradona, omnipresent in the Neapolitan legend.
Ending this scarcity would bring Garcia into this legend.
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