Terroni. That’s what the inhabitants of Naples are called by the rest of Italy, regions that include the affluent and cosmopolitan Milan, with its two behemoth football clubs that have won a combined 38 Scudettos, not to mention ten European Cups.
It’s a derogatory term used in Turin too, a city whose landscape is dominated by the imposing Allianz Stadium, home of Juventus. The Zebras have won the league 11 times since 2000 and countless times before.
These three clubs lie at the very heart of world football’s establishment. They always have the best players, most often bought, not nurtured.
They always grab the headlines and get the girl. And so their fans look down – figuratively, and literally when purveying a map – to the impoverished environs of Naples and its neighbouring towns and dismiss them out of hand.
Napoli Defy Odds
They are ‘terroni’, a word that faithfully translates as ‘southerners’ but the location is redundant in this instance. It more accurately means ‘underclass’. It more accurately means ‘peasants’.
Last summer, these southern peasants sold their defensive rock Kalidou Koulibaly and their midfield maestro Fabian Ruiz while reluctantly conceding too that age had finally caught up with their goal-scoring legends, Lorenzo Insigne and Dries Mertens.
Between them, these lethal hit-men had fired over 200 goals for Gli Azzurri but both were let go.
Understandably then, after several years of knocking at the scudetto door, with four runner-up finishes in the last 10 years under Benitez, Sarri and presently Luciano Spalletti, not a great deal was expected of Napoli this season.
They were a fading force. Their hopes of replicating their incredible glory days back in the late Eighties all-but-gone.
Players Step Up
Only then striker Victor Osimhen came to the fore like never before, notching 22 goals in 27 appearances across 2022/23. At the back, their £18m summer singing Kim Min-jae has been little short of magnificent.
Down the left flank meanwhile, we have witnessed one of the most exciting announcements of genius in recent times, with Georgian Khvicha Kvaratskhelia bamboozling full-backs and spell-checkers alike. The 22-year-old has been a revelation.
Looking complete and exhilarating from the off, Spalletti’s men quickly became a prominent fixture in the Serie A betting and led from the front from early September on.
Famous and impressive wins were secured in Milan, Rome and Turin. Goals were racked up at a rate of knots – or at least by Serie A standards – while at this late juncture they’ve been breached at the back every 129 minutes all campaign long.
A Dream Achieved
And on Thursday evening, by drawing away to Udinese, this mad, brilliant, vibrant, scary football club attained their first league title for 33 years, sparking celebrations usually reserved for the end of films that see aliens vanquished and humanity saved.
But this is not about the city-wide firework displays, the colour and the carnival. It is not even about the legacy of Diego Maradona, whose anarchic spirit is imbued in Naples’ brickwork and soul.
This season, Napoli were also strongly backed in the Champions League betting only to succumb at the quarter-final stage, their luminous artistry fatigued. But should they retain their key personnel, they’ll be back, topping Serie A predictions, and taking on the continental establishment.
This is a great team, one that seemingly sprang from nowhere. And that gives sincere hope for every one of us peasants out there.
