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Napoli drew 1-1 against Udinese on the 33rd day of Serie A and are mathematically champions of Italy for the third time in their history. In Udine they needed at least a draw to get the point they needed to win the championship. After the disadvantage suffered in the first half, the goal that symbolically brought the Scudetto back to Naples after 33 years was scored at the start of the second half by center forward Victor Osimhen.
It was since 1992 that the championship had been won continuously by teams from Milan, Turin and Rome. And not counting Cagliari in 1970, no other southern Italian team has ever won one other than Napoli, who have now joined Roma with three league titles.
Napoli’s victory in this championship had been taken for granted for weeks now. The team coached by Luciano Spalletti was by far the best of the season, so much so that they already had an advantage of almost twenty points over their opponents months ago.
Luciano Spalletti among the fans in Udine (Alessandro Sabattini/Getty Images)
In January, after a historic 5-1 win against Juventus, they finished top of the first leg with 50 points out of 57 available (becoming the third team in a twenty-team league to reach 50 points in a first leg ). This trend then continued until March, the month in which Napoli lost some points in connection with their Champions League commitments, where this season they nevertheless reached the quarter-finals for the first time in their history.
The superiority of Napoli is also testified by the numbers. With five games to go, in addition to the 18-point advantage over the second, he is both the best attack and the best defense in the league. The data of the attack are particularly significant. He scored 69 goals in 33 days: more than two per game and 9 more than Inter, the second best attack (which, however, scored 6 against Verona on Wednesday). Its top scorer, Osimhen, is also the league’s top scorer with 22 goals.
Victor Osimhen after the goal against Udinese (Alessandro Sabattini/Getty Images)
The Scudetto had already been celebrated in the city for weeks, but with the mathematical victory obtained on Thursday the real celebrations will begin, which will continue until at least 4 June, the date of the last day of the championship in which Napoli will be awarded in their stadium at the end of the match against Sampdoria.
The only two championships won so far by Napoli had arrived at the turn of the eighties and nineties, in the period in which Diego Armando Maradona was there. In the following years the team had progressively moved away from those levels. In 2001 it had been relegated to Serie B for the first time and was declared bankrupt four seasons later. The following year it restarted from Serie C after being bought by film producer Aurelio De Laurentiis, who brought it back to Serie A in 2008 without ever leaving it.
Under De Laurentiis, Napoli experienced the most stable and competitive decades in its history, becoming to all intents and purposes one of the “big” players in the Italian championship. The third Scudetto comes after four third places and four second places, the last of which in 2019.
– See also: The photos of the celebrations for the Scudetto of Napoli