Aurelio De Laurentiis Behind Napoli’s 2023-24 Malaise, Not Rudi Garcia

It was all so inevitable that it would end this way. The only real shock was that it took so long.

Napoli officially parted company with Rudi Garcia, ending an unsurprisingly horrendous four-month spell in which the reigning Italian champions resembled nothing close to the swashbuckling side that rampaged to the Scudetto last season.

His reign may have ended with the dire 1-0 home defeat to Empoli last Sunday, but the reality is the Garcia era was doomed from the start. His appointment was just bizarre, a manager who was last relevant nearly a decade ago and had just been recently sacked from Saudi Pro League side Al-Nassr in April.

The only criteria seemingly fitting Garcia for the job was the continuation of the 4-3-3 system that his predecessor Luciano Spalletti built and won the title with. For everything else, the Frenchman felt completely out of sync in southern Italy. His apparent refusal to even utter Spalletti’s name was mystifying as it was petty. Moreover, Garcia’s desire to make Serie A’s most dynamic and fluid attacking team ultra reactive and defensive within the space of several months attracted severe criticism from pundits and fans alike.

Further to this, Garcia also rubbed star players up the wrong way. He substituted Victor Osimhen and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia in games where Napoli needed goals early in the season, and the two key players of the Scudetto-winning side didn’t take too kindly to the gesture. Kvaratskhelia was even dropped for Garcia’s last dance with Empoli, shifting to a 4-2-3-1 system that proved utterly insipid against a side possessing a wage bill twice as small.

Regardless of the Empoli defeat, Garcia had felt like a dead man coaching for some time, ever since Napoli president Aurelio De Laurentiis tweeted in the aftermath of the 0-0 draw with Bologna on September 24. In the weeks that followed, Napoli limped along under Garcia, with hopes of retaining their title fading with each passing week.

Yet that being said, the buck doesn’t stop at Garcia. While no doubt his dismissal was entirely warranted, he shouldn’t have been in the job in the first place. De Laurentiis has a lot to answer for. The 74-year-old has usually got his coaches more often right than wrong during his 19-year reign as club owner, but the hiring of Garcia was a spectacular misfire, a Walmart
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choice designed to not spend the money needed to hire a suitable and modern coach. Fiorentina’s Vincenzo Italiano was the obvious candidate to takeover from Spalletti. Even Antonio Conte — who is as stylistically opposed to Spalletti as one could find — would’ve been a better fit considering his pedigree.

De Laurentiis seemingly realised the error of his ways and attempted to lure Conte into replacing Garcia — twice — once the season had started. However Conte rejected his approach, with the former Juventus coach hesitant to take over a club mid-season. De Laurentiis may return for a Conte a third time next summer, yet it was an approach that should’ve been made four months ago.

Garcia has been the face of Napoli’s failure this season, but De Laurentiis has been the architect behind the malaise. Cristiano Giuntoli left for Juventus, and De Laurentiis has faced criticism in Italy for not replacing him. The president has been accused of involving himself too much in team affairs since Giuntoli’s departure. After winning the title, Napoli lost not just Giuntoli, but the club’s athletic coach and marketing manager. Add these to Spalletti and Kim Min-Jae, the best defender in Serie A last season, and you begin to see that De Laurentiis’ choices and lack of action has been startling, and gives a truer picture of Napoli’s performances on the pitch.

Former Napoli sporting director Pierpaolo Marino — who worked under De Laurentiis from 2004 to 2009 and signed future club legends Marek Hamsik and Ezequiel Lavezzi — perhaps summed it up best, telling Corriere dello Sport: “The owner of the clinic can’t also be a surgeon.” And this has been the crux of the issue since the Scudetto was lifted into the Neapolitan sky on that first weekend in June.

With Conte’s second rejection and a deal for Igor Tudor falling flat, De Laurentiis has gone back to the future in hiring Walter Mazzarri. Mazzarri is clearly a stop-gap, a coach who was last relevant even further in the past than Garcia. Yet it’s clear De Laurentiis has written the season off, retaining the title is out of the question and a top four finish the main objective for Mazzarri.

Napoli are clearly more than good enough to finish in the Champions League places, but De Laurentiis must fix the issues he himself has caused next summer, starting with hiring a world class surgeon.