Why Napoli’s Serie A title win is a miracle | OneFootball

Napoli have won the Serie A for the second time in three seasons and even though the feeling of the triumph isn’t as unique as how the Scudetto under Luciano Spalletti felt, the achievement this season is a bit of a miracle.

The 2022/23 season was awash with purity and a sense of redemption for a city that seeks a lot of identity from football. The title win came for the first time since the Maradona days and it came when Spalletti’s side played scintillaing football at times. There was the emergence of two superstars who were clicking together, scoring buckets of goals. They were competing for the Scudetto in the previous season as well and were in the race till March.

The 2024/25 season should always be known as something far different. Napoli had finished tenth in the 2023/24 season and their mistakes in the transfer window and managerial selections had haunted them. There was dressing room chaos, players seeking to leave, Victor Osimhen leaving, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia left in the middle of the season and they had a very focused Inter side to deal with.

Antonio Conte had to deal with all of that and more. Club captain Giovanni di Lorenzo’s agent had made public statements about wanting to leave Napoli and he made it clear that Conte’s presence would not make a different. In the summer, Kvaratskhelia’s agent was pushing to leave and had brought offers from Paris Saint-Germain. As the Osimhen situation brewed in the background, Conte privately made sure that Di Lorenzo and Kvaratskhelia stayed and they were promised key roles in the project, somewhat stabilising the dressing room.

Kim Min-Jae, who wasn’t replaced properly after his exit, was replaced by Torino’s emblematic leader in Alessandro Buongiorno. When Osimhen was on the verge of an exit and Conte had excluded him from the project, Napoli’s first game saw them fall in a chaotic abyss. They lost their first game of the season to Hellas Verona, who run through their midfield and it was clear that the team was lacking physical venom.

After that infamous loss, Conte made it clear that Napoli needed signings to challenge for the title and in came Romelu Lukaku. Scott McTominay and Billy Gilmour also arrived from the Premier League and Conte’s role in bringing them to Naples was paramount, as the Italian had watched the ex-Brighton player closely during his time at Chelsea.

Throughout the season, Conte has had to adapt. It has tested him. The ex-Tottenham boss is known as someone who has one way and won’t back away from it. But this season shows that he definitely does adapt to the needs of the squad.

Buongiorno has been excellent when he has played but the Azzurri star has missed 16 games due to injury. Stanislav Lobotka, whose role in the 2022/23 success was massive, has also declined physically and missed multiple games earlier in the season. Kvaratskhelia was replaced by Noah Okafor, who has barely done much.

David Neres, who was vital in the first half of the season, missed eight games since February and scored only once in 2025.

Despite all that, Conte managed expectations and the entire squad brilliantly. So much of it is down to his extremely accurate identification of player strengths and how those strengths can be maximised by his system.

Importantly enough, Andre-Frank Zambo Anguissa’s role constantly shifted from someone who plays deeper to someone who occupies the box often. It is the Cameroonian’s multi-functional traits that have come through as a result of Conte’s usage.

McTominay’s constant usage in the final third has brought the most out of the Scotsman and it is a farcry from how he was often used at Manchester United and that exposed his weaknesses in deeper areas. Quite the same applies to Gilmour’s usage and it was fitting that the midfielder was Man of the Match in the game against Inter, which the Partenopei drew because of an unlikely goal from January signing Phillip Billing.

When it became clear that there was need for attacking impetus, Napoli overloaded the midfield and relied on wide combinations. Conte adapted so much that on paper, his formation changed. While it came as a shock to many, the Italian just became less transfixed in his older methods and added more dynamism to his setup. It was oddly reminiscent of his second season at Inter and it is saying something that he did that in his first season at Napoli.

As the season went on, Lukaku’s role became undeniably huge. He became that wall striker that everyone can bounce off and he formed a devastating pairing with McTominay, who scored two braces towards the end of the campaign and then racked up a brace of assists as well. Within that period, Matteo Politano’s role gained weight, as the Italy international had to pick the right passes and also use the overlaps from wide areas when needed.

Napoli have ended the season with Matias Olivera at centre-back and Leonardo Spinazzola, who many thought is heading away from Serie A, operating at left-back and that in itself screams volumes for how potentially unlikely this title win was.

The Partenopei had no semblance of an identity last season and the constant chopping and changing of managers made sure that whatever Spalletti had built was eroded. Physically, the team was shattered and the squad, even after Conte took over, was imperfect at best.

They were also coming up against a much more well-oiled machine in Inter, who are arguably the most stable club in Serie A in the last few years. Compare what Inter were last season to what Napoli were at that point, you would laugh if someone told you that Conte would blitzkrieg his way to the title in the 2024/25 season. That is why the Scudetto is a miraculous achievement.

Kaustubh Pandey I GIFN