Inter–Napoli was exactly the match Italian football needed at a time when the game desperately needs stories and heroes.
Football is going through a major transition, one in which its very future as a mass-market spectacle is under discussion.
In the era of reels and shorts, with attention spans and interest eroded by habits shaped by algorithms, no sport can afford long pauses or boredom.
The topic is a long one and deserves deeper analysis, but to grasp its scope it’s enough to think about tennis, which in Italy is booming again thanks to the “Sinner phenomenon,” just as Alberto Tomba once did for skiing in the 1990s.
Tennis, a sport facing the same challenges as football in terms of maintaining appeal and constantly re-presenting itself as a media product (calling it merely “television” is now outdated), has introduced a strict countdown on the serve to drastically reduce dead time and limit pauses.
That’s just one example, among many, to show how—quoting Heraclitus—“everything flows,” and how every sport must try to recalibrate itself to keep pace with the times.
This applies even more to football. Compared to tennis, basketball, volleyball or American football, football starts with a difficult gap to bridge: very few points are scored.
A football match can end with neither team scoring a single point—that is, a goal. Since the goal is the ultimate purpose of football, the great paradox of the sport is that a game can unfold for ninety minutes plus stoppage time without anyone achieving the very objective the game is played for.
To put it bluntly, we’re not far from the truth in saying that this is the main reason football has never fully captured American hearts.
So far, this is a quick and far from exhaustive analysis, but it highlights a fundamental critical issue—a “problem.” How do you solve it?
First, by introducing new rules that can speed up the game and reduce dead time. That’s a matter for the future, with a task force of experts already at work to recalibrate football to new demands—because that’s exactly what’s required, nostalgia notwithstanding.
Because if football were still anchored to the “glorious 1980s and ’90s,” setting aside the great players who graced Italian pitches back then and whom we can only dream of today, it would be a dead and buried sport. Just imagine a modern match with a hundred-plus back-passes to the goalkeeper, who could pick the ball up with his hands, hold it, waste time and slow everything down…
Everything flows, as we said, and rule changes help a sport survive by keeping up with the times—without losing its identity and uniqueness.
While waiting for new rules, football today needs stories to tell, new heroes, great coaches, great players, great plays—and above all, great matches that can serve as a spot for the sport.
Napoli over the last three years, regardless of allegiances, are objectively a great story. A historically underachieving club wins an unthinkable, dominant Scudetto under Spalletti, collapses the following season, then comes back to win a second title with another great coach, Conte, taking on and beating the northern giants who have monopolized Italian silverware for the past 50 years.
Can the Partenopei pull it off again this season? That is one of the most compelling storylines of the campaign—especially when the script adds a string of injuries to key players and a halting start (think Bologna–Napoli and Conte’s outburst…), with the sense that another “crash after the triumph” might be coming.
You don’t have to be a Napoli fan to see that, in recent years, Napoli have contributed more than anyone else—narratively, story-wise—to saving Italian football… from boredom.
Every story needs its protagonists—heroes or the heroes’ nemeses. Spalletti was a hero as a winner (with Napoli), then became the hero’s nemesis, an anti-hero after failing in blue. He even turned into an enemy of the very people who had tattooed him onto their hearts after the Scudetto, by choosing to coach the hated Juventus.
For better or worse, Spalletti is a hero/anti-hero Italian football desperately needs, with his visions, real or imagined enemies, and marathon press conferences that fuel debate for days.
Mourinho was another great hero of our football—loved and hated but never dull—until the Friedkins made one of the most disastrous ownership decisions ever by sacking him from Roma, depriving Romanisti of their hero and Serie A of a character it badly needed.
Conte is undoubtedly another great hero of Italian football—perhaps the greatest right now—with all the love and hate that label brings. Conte is Mourinho 2.0.
Great players are fewer, it’s true. Great players are consistent, decisive over time, they fall and rise again. They make the difference and, above all, they produce great plays.
Once again, Napoli must be mentioned, because they are the club that has most clearly delivered great players and great moments in recent years.
When I think of decisive players—franchise men who write winning stories—I think of Osimhen and Kvaratskhelia in Spalletti’s Napoli: perfect cover stars in a top-level technical and tactical context. Today I think of Scott McTominay, the Scudetto man of Conte’s Napoli last season, outstanding in returning to his best after a sluggish start that suggested the magic might be over.
The reference to “McFratm,” as he’s been dubbed by the city that adopted him (a Scottish-Neapolitan—what could be more evocative?), brings us back to the present and to the title of this editorial: Inter–Napoli, a great spot for the sport.
Inter–Napoli was a great match, a true spot for football. A favored Inter at full strength against an injury-hit Napoli, with five Primavera players on the bench, yet never beaten—thanks above all to that Scottish hero turned Neapolitan.
Twice behind and twice able to claw their way back, Napoli delivered an heroic performance, denying Inter a win that could have sparked a decisive Scudetto surge and keeping the title race wide open.
Inter, too, played a tough, authoritative game worthy of a big match, and the final 2–2 draw was a fair result at the end of the right match—one filled with great plays, heroes, stories, debates, arguments, shouts, anger, intensity. Everything.
The match football needed. Because there is an ever-growing need for games that serve as a spot for the sport.
L’articolo A great spot proviene da Soccer Made In Italy.
