With the aura of Diego and the fervor of a city, Napoli runs through its prelude to glory, every day closer to the third star

Naples live the prelude to a party. And he does it his way: with overflows of passion, with screams in all corners, central and suburbs, with everyone dressed in the blue of their heart and their team, with that Diego which does not need a surname as a banner. Hanging on flags with its Dieci and its imprint, in public buildings, in private homes (in many cases open to neighbors and tourists), at the University, in schools, in cars, in restaurants, wherever your imagination adapts to a place…

Gildas Le Roux, of the AFP agency, snapped a photo of the scene on site: “From its narrow streets to its balconies, the city of Naples is tinged with light blue, the color of his football team, which is approaching its third Scudetto, a long-awaited Scudetto. With eight appointments to go, the Neapolitans have a 14-point lead over Lazio. The title would be historic for the club ever since He hasn’t raised it since 1990 at the hands of Diego Maradonathe legend of Argentine football to which the city still grants a reverential halo of sanctity today.

He also says that “in the Quartieri Spagnoli, a labyrinth of alleys in the heart of the city where the heart of the Neapolitan people beats, devotion is maximum for a team led on the offensive side by the Nigerian striker Victor Osimhen“. Corresponds to add to the always unpredictable Kvaratskeliaborn in Georgia but with the appearance of a suburban pasture, Rosario, Misiones or some remote corner of the Argentine map.

Sebastián Fernández -Argentinian, journalist, photographer, traveler and former footballer- also went there these days. His eyes saw it. The city of many vertigo dresses up, blue, and with the number three everywhere, without fear of the mufa. They are as convinced as they were in Diego’s time.

One impression remains: the elimination in the quarterfinals of the Champions League against Milan (2-1 on aggregate) they don’t seem to curb the joy and anxiety for the imminence of the conquest. Nor the 15 points that the Italian Federation returned to the sanctioned player Juventus (He was now third on 16 points with 24 to play). The archrival from the North will be an opponent again this Sunday, in Turin. The shooting guard is Lazio, who lost 1-0 against Turin at the Olimpico on Saturday. Add 61, i.e. 14 less than Napoli with one more game.

Two facts tell the dimension of this season: the first, Napoli hasn’t won the Scudetto since the 89/90 season (the first was in 86/87); the second, from the 2000/01 season, when Roma with Gabriel Batistuta emerged as champions, no team other than the three giants (Juventus, Milan and Inter, all three today in the semifinals of European competitions) could celebrate. In the case of Roma it was also the third championship.

The matrix of this Already seen

Antonio Juliano played 505 games for Napoli. He is in the top 3 of the category in the history of the Southern Italy club. So he was the head of the institution. One day, his wife offered him a challenge: “And why don’t you call Maradona because they say he wants to leave Barcelona?”.

Giuliano thought about it. He revived. In that 1984, Diego came to town, in a team to fight for permanence, broken in his spirit, wounded in his self-esteem. Record number for the time: seven and a half million dollars. Reception of the apotheosis. The newspapers of Italy and the world no longer spoke of the despised Juventus or the giants of Milan. The proletarian south was exhibited before everyone by the hand of a servant in the mud of Fiorito.

Before signing the contract, Maradona went to Juliano’s house. He grabbed one of the lemons from the various lemon trees in the garden. He started playing a game. The chief’s sons saw him.

– Dad, will he play for us?

Yes, we have to sign.

“Now we can be champions”one of the boys said.

There are other names now, but the feel is the same. Now Napoli can be champions. And you can treat yourself to such a luxury as an eternal hug: do the Olympic tour at the Diego Armando Maradona stadium.

Somewhere in history Massimo Vignatti, one of his closest people in the glory days for the team wearing blue, said it: “We Neapolitans could not go against Diego. Never. It was us. Like a brother.” At Massimo’s house, his mother often prepared her favorite foods for Diego. Now, in the largest room of that house is a museum dedicated to universal super crack.

It happened in 2011. The City of Manchester stadium was not a random scenario: Napoli’s exit on the field represented the club’s return to prominence in the top European competition, after two decades of absence. The result of the opener against Manchester City didn’t matter. In that September, the southerners returned to play in the Champions League as a real novelty. That Naples was the best of the post-Maradona era, in which it even dropped to the third division.

When the formations were announced, an omission reminded us of that boy from Villa Fiorito who definitively became Maradona under the Neapolitan sky: no one -neither in this Champions League nor ever- will use the shirt with the number 10 in an official match. It is the only number retired by the club.

That initiative – born from the newspaper The morning– was accepted and approved by popular clamor. Even from the protagonist himself involved. Diego then declared: “More than a gift, I consider it a recognition for that football, for those successes and because I also feel Neapolitan for sharing one of the happiest and luckiest periods of my life with you”.

In some corner of heaven that has won, Maradona – happy and with a clenched fist and ready to celebrate – will surely say, in some way or more, that he is present in these magical days.

Two stars for Maradona’s sky

Napoli have two of the best performing and fastest growing footballers of the season; the first is Victor Osimhen, 24, born in Lagos, the former capital of Nigeria and the most populous city in the African country. In 2015 he was Under 17 world champion. He He started his season early in Europe: Wolfsburg, Belgium’s Charleroi, Lille and from mid-2020 he played for Napoli. He wears the number 9 shirt. Until this season he had behaved in an acceptable way, at times remarkable. But this season it seems he has been touched by a magic wand or, who knows, a magic hand: he has amassed 21 goals in 26 Serie A appearances. He is top scorer of the team and of the tournament (followed by Lautaro Martínez, with 14 goals) .

The perfect partner is the latest jewel of Eastern Europe. Regard Khvicha Kvaratskheliabut everyone knows him and calls him Kvara or Vara or even Kvaradona. He was born in Tbilisi, the capital of his country, the former Soviet Republic, and he turned 22 on February 12. In 2017 he was already playing in the First Division, for Dinamo Tbilisi, the most important team in Georgia. Then he went to Rustavi, made the leap into football in the Russian Federation (he played for Lokomotiv Moscow and Rubin Kazan). It didn’t go well for him and he returned home to play for Dinamo Batumi. Last year Napoli bought him. And as in the case of Osimhen, a magic wand or a hand touched him. He plays as a full back, but arrives on goal from centre-forward. He adds 12 goals (for the first time in his career in a season) and 10 assists (he is the leader of the category in Serie A). Sometimes he seems unstoppable, almost Maradonian.

With them, and with a team that Spalletti has been able to manage so well, Napoli – like Argentina in Qatar – is looking for the third star of its rich history.