Key Departures Leave More Questions Than Answers for Napoli

To stick or twist? Quiet evolution or complete revolution?

These are the questions Napoli owner Aurelio De Laurentiis is no doubt asking himself this summer. De Laurentiis, after 19 years of ownership and a couple of close calls, brought the Scudetto south for the first time since 1990.

In that intervening period, the furthest south the title had been was its two-year sojourn in Rome, when Lazio and Roma won a title each in consecutive seasons at the start of the millennium. Of course as history would play out, those successes were fleeting and at huge financial cost that set both sides back years in the ugly aftermath.

The challenge now for De Laurentiis and Napoli is to not become another Roma and Lazio, at least not from a sporting perspective. On a financial level, Napoli are in rude health, and the chances of De Laurentiis following in the footsteps of Sergio Cragnotti and Franco Sensi are remote.

But De Laurentiis has endured a tricky summer transfer window already. Luciano Spalletti has already left the club, something that was known even before the title was lifted on the final day of the season on June 4. Since then, sporting director Cristiano Giuntoli has finally been allowed to leave in order to join Juventus and help rebuild Italy’s biggest club, and Kim-Min Jae, arguably the best defender in Serie A last season, is on the cusp of signing for Bayern Munich after the German activated the €58m ($63m) clause in his contract.

Moreover, there are still question marks surrounding star striker Victor Osimhen and whether he will remain in Naples for a fourth season. It’s thought that Napoli will only accept offers north of €150m ($163m) for Osimhen, and likely this won’t happen unless Kylian Mbappe happens to leave Paris Saint-Germain this summer.

De Laurentiis has already suffered three major departures this summer, a fourth in Osimhen likely wouldn’t instil confidence from Napoli fans over retaining their title in 2023-24. Rudi Garcia has replaced Spalletti, a decision that could go spectacularly right or wrong, but few doubt there’ll be a middle ground with the Frenchman, who hasn’t won anything of note in Europe since his time at Lille in 2011.

Who replaces Giuntoli and Kim will be critical to the success of Napoli’s title retention next season. The latter, especially, won’t be easy to replace without breaking the bank. A bid for Wolves defender Max Kilman has already been turned down.

Furthermore, it remains to be seen if Garcia will ‘demand’ some players of his own or whether he’s happy to utilise players within the squad. Sassuolo’s Maxime Lopez has been linked with a move to Napoli, with the French midfielder having played under Garcia at Marseille several years ago. Lopez is in the Stanislav Lobotka mould and could be a cover for the Slovakian, who was one of the cornerstones of Spalletti’s Napoli. Yet in the main, Napoli haven’t been linked with too many players.

Does De Laurentiis stick with mostly the same team that won the title, or sign one or two names to keep things fresh? This element was always one of the things Sir Alex Ferguson was a master of during his 26-year reign at Manchester United. Ferguson knew when winning sides needed something extra and make changes, knowing that keeping the same group of players together for extended periods of time could lead to stagnation and a fall-off in standards. He broke up teams time and again.

It was something Juventus were kings of in Serie A in the late 1990s. Roberto Baggio was sold in the summer of 1995 after winning their first Scudetto for nine years; then Gianluca Vialli and Fabrizio Ravanelli were discarded a year later; Christian Vieri and Alen Boksic given the same treatment the following summer. Marcello Lippi liked to keep evolving his side, even when they were reaching Champions League finals and winning Scudetti.

This is the conundrum De Laurentiis also faces, beyond replacing Kim: break the side up too quickly and the momentum of the title win is gone; don’t change it enough and predictability can become an issue.

What De Laurentiis does in the coming weeks will be interesting.