NAPLES. Group psychotherapy to defend the Champions League qualification. The sensational defeat suffered in Empoli, where Napoli collapsed in the final match, conceding three goals in just eight minutes, led the company to take action and decide on an indefinite retirement. After the shock, the club points out, to prevent dangerous reactions, that this is not a punitive service order. But chaos remains within the team group and in the whole environment of the fans.
The memory of what happened three years ago, after the draw in the Europa League with Salzburg, is still etched in the memory of managers and fans. At that time the coach was Ancelotti and all hell happened. The team’s reaction to the announcement of the retirement was very hard and some players reacted with extremely heated tones towards the vice president, Eduardo De Laurentiis. The players decided a real mutiny and refused to go into retreat. There were disciplinary and even judicial aftermaths, some of which have not yet been exhausted. Three years have passed and almost nothing has changed. The only difference is in the coach’s reaction to the decision to bring everyone into retirement. Ancelotti accepted the imposition without agreeing, Spalletti instead would have shared it.
To add fuel to the fire and to make the situation more chaotic comes a statement from the club in which Calcio Napoli tries to give an explanation to the decision taken. The text opens up new fronts of discussion and controversy and above all it is at the center of very harsh interventions by the fans who have been unleashed on social media throughout the day. «The club, the sports management, the coach and the staff – is the text of the note – have decided that the most important thing to do right now is to integrate the usual daily training schedule. The work shifts will remain the same with great attention to the single individual components and to the group. Meetings of theory and evaluations of upcoming games, as always done. All integrated, and this is the novelty, from evening meetings to dinner to open up more on any critical issues, problems, misunderstandings, quality of play, all to maximize the excellent quality of our players demonstrated in the first part of the season ». On social media, fans comment and contest with sarcastic interventions, especially the part of the press release which talks about the moments to share at dinner, as if it were, in fact, group psychotherapy sessions. There remains the black mood of the team that does not think it deserves such treatment. During the return by train from Empoli some ‘elders’ of the group would have tried to persuade Spalletti to put pressure on the president to cancel the provision, but without obtaining any results.
From tomorrow, therefore, when training resumes, we will all go to retreat but we do not yet know in which hotel because in the one adjacent to the training fields, in Castel Volturno, there are no rooms available. And above all it will be interesting to understand how the team will react in view of Sassuolo on Saturday afternoon at Maradona. In recent years, when relations between the group of players and the club have cracked, the results have never been satisfactory. Four days from the conclusion of the championship, Napoli still have a nine-point advantage over fifth in the standings, so qualifying for next year’s Champions League should be pretty safe. There are many fans who ask themselves whether this retirement was the right and most useful decision to achieve the only result that matters. But the club goes straight on its way and an answer to this question will only come at the end of the championship.