Naples became the capital of the football world on May 4, 2023, as the team from this southern Italy city won its first Serie A title in 33 years after coming from behind to secure a 1-1 draw against Udinese. This date will be marked in the history of the club as Napoli last Serie A title came in 1990, when the late Diego Maradona led the team to the title.
It’s only the third Napoli Scudetto, and the club’s success sparked jubilant celebrations among the players and the entire city. The fans of Napoli packed the Diego Armando Maradona Stadium to celebrate the team’s success proving that football is religion in this city and Maradona is the football God.
The team was founded in 1926 with the merger of US Internazionale Napoli and Naples Foot-Ball Club.
The club’s golden era began in the summer of 1984 when Maradona entered the Stadio Sao Paolo after a record-breaking transfer from Barcelona. More than 75,000 Neapolitans greeted him with overwhelming warmth.
At the time, the city felt like the unwanted child of Italy, and things have not changed much, almost 40 years later. Maradona’s introduction, therefore, represented the beginning of a new chapter for him as a player, for Napoli as a club, and also for Naples as a city.
Less than three years later, thanks to a gradual rebuilding project, Napoli were finally kings of Italy, winning their first-ever Napoli Scudetto in the 1986-87 season. They even became the third Italian team to win the double after beating Atalanta in the Coppa Italia.
In the 1989-90 season, they won the second title, which ended up being the last until Luciano Spalletti led the team to the crown in 2023.
A year after the 1990 title, Napoli began to unwind with players departing, leading to a performance drop. The headline departure came when Maradona failed a drug test and left Italy in disgrace after being handed a 15-month ban.
Following years of steady decline, the club was relegated from Serie A after claiming a miserly 14 points from 34 games in the 1997-98 season. Only eight years after being crowned Italian champion, Napoli was in the second tier.
The disappointment didn’t end there. Despite a small respite back in the top-flight in the 2000-01 season, the club was immediately relegated after their first season back in Serie A before the club was declared bankrupt for the second year in a row, which saw it relegated to the third tier of Italian football in 2004. That was the first time the team played in the third league since its establishment in the 1920s.
The team hit rock bottom, but they could count on the supporters even then. Napoli fans’ never turned their back on the team and believed the glory days would be back.
The savior was the famous movie producer Aurelio De Laurentiis who stepped in to rescue the club to establish stability and return to former glories.
He made good on his promises, bringing Napoli back into the best Italian league in three years and into European competitions in the second year back in Serie A.
They have come close to win it all as Napoli has finished in second place four times, and they managed to make the final step with Luciano Spalletti, who took over the coaching job in 2021.
Two seasons later, Napoli won the title six rounds before the end of the season when they built a 16-point lead over Lazio, who was second in the standings. They lost only three games in the league by that point and a total of four, finishing the season with an impressive 90 points and a goal differential of 75 scored and 28 conceded goals.
The success was an outcome of Spaletti’s mastermind, who was able to implement his patient possession play in a 4-3-3 formation with a fluid offense and disciplined defense, leading the club to one of the most dominating campaigns that no Serie A experts saw coming.
Victor Osimhen was the key player on the pitch. The Nigerian striker scored 26 goals in 32 games in Serie A that season, becoming one of the hottest names on the football market. Khvicha Kvaratskhelia was another player who made the headlines as the 22-year-old Georgian had 12 goals and 13 assists in 34 games in the season.
Anyway, it was the team effort that made this a special team, as guys like Kim Min-jae, Piotr Zieliński, and Stanislav Lobotka played their supporting roles on the highest possible level.
These players ended a period of three long decades since Napoli last Serie A title, and many generations of fans have been waiting for this moment. The last time Napoli won the Scudetto, most of today’s Napoli players weren’t even born, and the fans are aware that they are privileged to witness such a historic moment.
What makes this title even more special is the fact that they won it without a superstar like Maradona back in the 80s. This team was all heart, with most of the guys taking their game to another level under coach Spaletti. The team wasn’t competitive in going after the best players in the world but still managed to bring in a group of guys who gathered with one goal only, and that is to win the Serie A title. Even though no football predictions went in their favor, Napoli still did the unthinkable, leaving behind their rivals.
Napoli proved that anything is possible with the right approach. Their aggressive style and level of confidence changed the shape of the league. After a long dominance by Juventus, the two teams from Milano shared a couple of titles, and when no one really believed in teams from the south, Napoli came out of nowhere.
This success puts them back on the map of European football and regardless of the budget this club will have in the future, no one can take away this unforgettable moment. Players and coaches will come and go, but the passion of fans will be forever in Napoli, and as long as that is the case, this team will be among the best in the country.
