the secrets of today’s challenge – breaking latest news

This evening (9 pm) Milan and Napoli will play the first leg of the quarter-finals of the Champions League. Find here the analysis of all the quarters signed by Sandro Modeo; below, the chapter dedicated to today’s race.

The point from which to start, for the fourth perhaps most insinuating, apparently provocative. And that is: Napoli 2022-23 – which remains the strongest, so far, in the history of the club, as well as Spalletti’s masterpiece – has the same merits as Arteta’s Arsenal: two teams, of course, masterfully built, wonderful and extremely concrete, but also skilled in slipping into a corridor opened by the collapse of the competitors. THE GunnersAfter all, they have been and still are really thwarted only by the eternal City, in a year that saw the aforementioned end of the cycle of the Reds, the crises of Chelsea and Tottenham, the still intermittent rebirth of United; while the blues have transformed an undisputed domain in solitary flight from Mont Ventoux also thanks to the problematic moment (technical and otherwise) of the Juve, to the different implosion of the Milanese, to the unfinished growth of the Romans. Even in the Champions League, despite playing captivating football in the groups, he didn’t have probative opponents: the Reds again at the end of the cycle (from which he still lost at Anfield) and a declining Ajax, far from those of Bosz and Ten Hag; and not even Eintracht in the round of 16 (even if they won the last Europa League) represented a stress-test worthy of its new ambitions.

Sarri’s Napoli – which at times played football on partly different principles but of equal effectiveness and aesthetic impact, and in any case exercised the first real qualitative break in De Laurentis’ management – had to contend in the league with Juve at the top, finding in the Champions League, in order, Real in the round of 16 and then two infernal groups, first with City and Shakthar at the top, then with Psg and Liverpool (the real one). All this to blur certain hyperbole and harmful euphorias, especially in Naples, the city described so many times already in Maradona’s time (masterfully, for example, by Ottavio Bianchi) and ready to quickly overturn itself in periodical victim-conspiracy refrains, as in the days before Napoli-Milan in the championship. A provincial withdrawal, aggressive and self-destructive at the same time, which is the last useful thing for a team really capable of trying the double major.

Fortunately, the first to be aware of this seems to be the president, as shown by his exemplary resistance to ultra blackmail. In parallel with Spalletti’s masterpiece (and director Giuntoli, it goes without saying), the AC Milan season was one of (partial) disillusionment, due to so many strange co-factors: the probable overestimation of a team that won the title also due to harakiri from others (the Inter ), without affecting the great work of Pioli and the entire board, of course; a market, consequently, not up to par; an athletic training perhaps not always very happy, especially in the Qatari post-World Cup; the discontinuities-humors, together with the uncertainties about the future, of key champions such as Lion.

With intelligence and pragmatism, Pioli stopped the steep drop in January (four defeats) with the underlying goal of a protective 5-3-2. The team recovered, albeit with recurring recurrences (Fiorentina and Udinese), then re-emerging at its best at the San Paolo (sorry, Maradona) in the guise of the revived 4-2-3-1. On that match, there is already an exterminated literature: according to some, the 0-4 shook and charged Napoli more, numb from the sidereal detachment; according to others, it has eroded several certainties; according to still others, the match is irrelevant, both because it is only important for the Rossoneri and due to the absence of Osimhen; and so on, in infinite combinations and nuances.

Very probably, it will be very difficult to draw indications on the Champions League double from that match alone, because it is difficult to evaluate the momentum of the teams at an athletic and psychological level, or rather psycho-competitive: a forecast that would have been linear, almost taken for granted two months ago (of the 80 to 20 type for Napoli), is now fatally open. The indications from last weekend seem unambiguous, with a victory for Napoli over Lecce which gives them a further portion of the Scudetto, and an internal draw between Milan and Empoli which increases anxieties for the future Champions League (with the Milanese, as known, also hanging on the possible penalties of the Roman women). No certainty, therefore, but only a few silhouettes in the fog. Even if, perhaps, one can try to see some others.


From 0-4 on April 2, some important details finally emerged: that evening, Milan actually benefited, in pressing high and full court (see Bennacer on Lobotka), precisely by the absence of Osimhen, i.e. by a constant threat behind them; while Napoli lacked in countering the exits of the Rossoneri (Spalletti dixit) with offensive climbs out of timing. They are data (tracts) that become more consistent when combined with those of the match at San Siro in mid-September ’22: a very deceptive 1-2, because Milan dominated everything that day (possession, chances, shots with posts and crossbars, etc. etc.), and they did so – coincidentally – in the absence of Osimhen (there are Raspadori and Simeon). Two indications can be drawn from this: 1) the Rossoneri tested only one of the two blue-man monsters this year (Kvarashkelia), but not the Nigerian; 2) it cannot be excluded that Napoli suffer something structural in facing Milan: in sport, both individually and as a team, the type of interaction between two opponents matters a lot, at a geometric-biochemical level (see the cases of Nadal against Federer and Klopp’s teams against those of Pep). If that 1-2 was deceptive, it may have been, at least in the result, also the 0-4 in Naples. How deceitful they have been – both – it is above all up to Napoli to prove it, because the burden of proof always lies with the strongest team. And this year’s Napoli, the .