Naples on the roof of Italian football. The stakes are now cast: after their draw against Udinese on Thursday evening, Luciano Spalletti’s men win the 2023 championship. No question of waiting for the official end of the season and the party organized by the local authorities on June 4 for the Parthenopean city to go up in flames with the sound of car horns and fireworks awaiting the arrival of the players at the local airport. With a party that has panicked the seismographs of the Observatory of Vesuvius which, since the golden years of the Maradona era, has recorded the “earthquakes of happiness” of the Neapolitan people.
A joy that lives up to the expectation – endless. Thirty-three long years that the tifosi azzurri dreamed of this third title for their club, soon to be a hundred years old. “It’s almost as if we were waiting for the arrival of the Messiah,” enthuses Mariano, a 37-year-old Napoli fan, too young at the time to celebrate the first two crowns in 1987 and 1990. Besides, no players from the Neapolitan squad, led by his Georgian-Nigerian shock duo Kvaratskhelia / Osimhen (34 goals between them this season) was only born when the legend Maradona lifted the scudetto for the last time. For the team, “it was important not to get stuck on the memories of the 1980s and to move forward, to write a new chapter”, continues this downtown trader. But always under the protective eye of the Pibe de oro, which “watches us from above”.
On the flanks of Vesuvius, with the irresistible momentum of the Parthenopean club in recent months, we have sometimes come close to the sin of pride. From February, the most enthusiastic were already beginning to put on the flocked jerseys of the title of “Italian champions”. Not really to the taste of the superstitious: “They’re going to jinx us”, worried one fan. But impossible to curb the craze: the weeks passing, the districts of the city were one by one lined with ribbons and pennants in the colors of the club. On the balconies of the apartments, a jungle of flags bearing the effigy of the Azzurri heroes has arisen, dethroning the “extended laundry” in the ranking of essential photographs for the wave of tourists on the loose.
A bit everywhere on the corners of the streets, street stands have been offering since the spring the panoply – often counterfeited – of the perfect supporter, not without attracting the appetites of some Camorra clans, we learn from the pen of Nico Falco , journalist at Fanpage and connoisseur of the Neapolitan mafia.
As the Spalletti players’ title is celebrated, a faint scent of revenge hangs over the port city. Washed away the affront of 2018, “cursed year”, where Napoli finished four short lengths from Juventus despite an anthology victory in Turin (“Don’t give up / We have a dream in the heart / Let Naples become champion again” , sing since that famous year the “sons of Vesuvius”).
Accustomed to waves of insults each time the team travels outside the borders of the Mezzogiorno (the Transalpine South), Napoli supporters have tough leather. From the very classic terrone, the earthy ass in Italian, to the injunctions at Vesuvius to cleanse the city “by fire”, they have heard it all. Without forgetting the sadly famous song “Without this stench, even the dogs run away”, old refrain on the supposed lack of hygiene of the Neapolitans, also qualified as colerosi and terremotati, a contemptuous reference to the choleras and earthquakes which afflicted the city of Campania. Latest episode: mid-April when AC Milan supporters unfurled a banner with the GPS coordinates of a Neapolitan beauty and hygiene products store.
Far beyond the Bay of Naples, the shock wave of the coronation of the azzurri will spread to the four corners of the world, we promise. Like São Paulo, Rio, Buenos Aires and Sydney where there are more “Neapolitans” (descendants of Campanian immigrants) than in the city of Vesuvius itself. But it is at the foot of the volcano that the atmosphere promises to be the most incandescent. To the great displeasure of some irreducible “anti-football”. Here a retiree, still traumatized by the “bazaar of 1990”. There an exasperated mother between a pro-Juve son and a pro-Napoli husband. Or even a surfer, ulcerated by the importance of the round ball in view of the economic and social difficulties of his city. “For sure, Napoli have their problems. And not just a little, obviously recognizes Mariano. But at this moment, it’s as if everything stopped, continues the trader-tifoso. As if the team, with this beautiful game, this desire to win at all costs, made us put aside all these negative thoughts that afflict us daily. In town, the air is different. »
