Unpopular opinion: it’s not Garcia’s fault.

Fans are being, as usual, completely unreasonable and bipolar about a very common and predictable “sophomore slump”.

Let’s face it: Napoli winning the Scudetto last year was an exceptional occurrence. A mix of the team overperforming and all their rivals having an underwhelming season. Akin to what led the likes of Verona, Sampdoria, Lazio and Roma to win in the last 40 years.

But the squad was by any means good or deep enough to sustain a second run with more expectations and with the added pressure of having to deliver in CL as well.

Then DeLa sold Kim, replaced him with another semi-obscure player instead of strengthening the squad with players of a HIGHER caliber. And as if the lack of proper top-level signings wasn’t enough, Osimhen has been hampered by injuries and distracted by transfer rumours and off-the-pitch shenanigans that an actual Top Club would have nipped in the bud or avoided completely (I mean, the blunder by the social media manager was amateur hour stuff).

Then it also happened that most opponents got Kvara figured out. A poor run of form, an injury and the end of the “surprise effect” have turned last season’s breakthrough prospect into a known quantity who is struggling to be as devastating. And at times he started to remember Mr. Tiraggir’ Insigne, aka a one-trick pony who gets less useful the more he plays.

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So yeah… Garcia isn’t Guardiola, but the squad is unbalanced AF, lacks quality in some areas and is probably already satisfied by last year’s triumph to have the same hunger for success and willingness to work as hard.

It happens a lot when the club, the players, the board and the fandom don’t have an established winning culture that resets goals and expectations every season.

In a way, it happened even to post-Treble Inter (a whole different level) when Mou left and Moratti kept all the Heroes, on a higher wage, instead of cashing out on those who still had market and bringing in younger and ambitious prospects or more established players with a chip on their shoulder. The fall was swift and spectatcular, no matter who was in the dugout.

It’s a matter of mentality, not of tactics.

why de laurentis he took garcia has coach of napoli?

Last year we won Scudetto because every part of the machine works perfectly. Spalletti was great, players were great, Giuntoli was great, every single member of the staff was great.

After winning, ADL thought that it was only his credit and, acting like dumb as usual, made his first mistake of the new season: he activated the extension clause in Spalletti’s contract without telling him nothing. After that, Spalletti left and ADL decide to continue his centralization of power, taking a figurehead in place of Giuntoli and starts to make proclames like “everyone wants to train Napoli, I can choose between more than 40’s managers” and shit like that. The reality was that no big manager wants to, at least not ad ADL conditions, and he fished from the mud. Rudi Garcia was the one who tooked the bait.

Nobody knows why he picked Rudi Garcia , probably wanted an owner’s coach who would do anything ADL says

Saving money and downscale the team, I’m surprised ADL hasn’t sold both kvara and osimhen for 200 mils

Probabilmente per dare continuità al progetto Napoli basato su gioco offensivo e 433/4231, tutte caratteristiche che hanno contraddistinto le squadre di Garcia, senza dimenticare che comunque RD è un allenatore di esperienza anche europea e che già conosceva il campionato italiano.

Listen it’s true ADL got cocky, but also it’s not easy to replicate winning again.

Napoli have their way how they run a club, which differs from Juve/Inter/Milan. The later requires more money, more risks and more debts.

If anthg Roma is run more like big boys, and Napoli is in Lazio/Fiore/Atalanta bracket. But even doing so they have outperformed many teams over years

I don’t think it’s entirely his fault, nobody in the team backed him since day one. He’s never been an exceptional coach, but he’s obtained good results especially in France (same as Spalletti, who’s always been decent but never a great one) and could have done good at Napoli.

It’s true ADL sold Kim to buy the unknown Natan (actually the best performing defender of the whole team) and bought some mysterious players, such as Lindstrom and Cajuste (you cannot buy a Kvara every year), but also managed to keep both Osimhen and Kvara, against all odds.

I’d definitely say Garcia was doomed since day one, as nobody would ever believe in him.

A bit long…

First of all, people’s rants are not relevant. People have been unhappy with the signing of Sarri, Spalletti and so on.

When Sarri struggled at the beginning, people wanted him out. He didn’t win but those seasons are still in the heart and eyes of every Napoli fan.

When Spalletti lost against Empoli (from 2-0 to 2-3 in 10 minutes) in his first season, a lot of people wanted him out. We know what happened next.

Often there’s no correlation between rants and reality.

The big problem with this season is that ADL underestimated the impact of the manager on this team. He thought that having won with such a big margin, we could set autopilot and land on another great season.

So when Spalletti (and Giuntoli) left in the summer and ADL had to look for a replacement he tried with some high profile manager but didn’t succeed (we have to consider that ADL makes extremely intricate contracts with many clauses that he uses to maximize the control he can have on the player or manager he is hiring, but this can lead to some issues with higher profiles). At this point he tried some secondary profile and here comes the trouble.

If you have listened to the pre-season interviews there was something off since the beginning because the impression was that he was really trying too hard to convince everyone (maybe including himself) that Garcia was the right choice. I had never seen a presentation of a new manager in the Capodimonte museum before and now that I think about it I should have known.

Everything was meaningless. ADL continued to refer to 433 as if any manager playing with 433 will do the same stuff. He wanted to go on the footprint of Spalletti’s tactics and since then there’s been a lot of problems on the communication layer. Every time some journalist asked about last season it looked like Garcia had not watched any match or studied last season tactics because he clearly has his pride to preserve and doesn’t want to be just a Spalletti’s copycat (or cosplayer 😂).

And I think there’s another problem also with the sporting director Meluso. He’s a good guy and I don’t have proof that he’s not the right guy (yet) but he seems a bit too soft to be able to counter the oppressive figure of ADL.

Napoli have lost their mojo. i’m not a huge conte fan but i could see him having at least one great season with them. De Zerbi would be the #1 choice for me, to build something.

Simply because there was nobody else. He said that he wanted Thiago Motta which would have been the best choice imho but unfortunately he refused, like other managers, probably because this year was gonna be really tough considering that it was really difficult to win the scudetto again. I don’t agree with people saying he got cocky or that he wanted to save money, it’s a legend that goes on since he bought Napoli. As for the new players Natan seems like a great defender and he’s still young so he can improve further, while Cajuste and Lindstrom I think will be very important in the future they just need more play time. Personally I think the only problem this season was the choice of Garcia but again, it’s due to the lack of managers available right now, look at Milan, if they sack Pioli who are they gonna pick?

Sad reality is that nobody really wanted that job this summer.

It was a no win scenario. Doing as well was highly unlikely, and even if you can replicate the success of last year people would still say that you got a free ride on Spalletti’s team.

De laurentis said it was because he plays the same formation as Spalletti

Why sell kim? He had no option they paid his release clause. Also Napoli is a small team that needs the revenue.

to be honest I think his hiring was born from bitterness/spite

Spalletti took Garcia’s job at Roma way back when & ADL bought into Garcia’s “revenge tour” taking Spalletti’s job. It failed spectacularly as predicted.

His job interview with ADL was probably all bald fraud jokes

No one wanted to take Napoli’s Bench after Spalletti.
Non even Spalletti accepted, because everything after a Scudetto would have been trash, even another impossible scudetto would have been considered less. Supporters, and people in general expected big things, and would have judged badly even a good season without trophies.

So the old smart man De Laurentiis paid Rudi Garcia to be a sort of scapegoat, to set people’s judgement to a correct level, and facilitate Napoli’s work for the next seasons, and this one too.

Natan has been Napoli best defender this season.
His impact is not the same Kim had, but the Korean had the luck to come in a perfectly working team.

About Garcia… most ADL haters will probably say that he choose Garcia out of arrogance or something like that… but, imho he just picked the only free manager with a positive past experience in a Serie A top team and with a preferred formation at least broadly similar to Spalletti’s one.