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Napoli Emerges as Scudetto Champions After 33-Year Wait – A Review of the 2022/23 Serie A Season

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It’s been three decades and three years since Diego Armando Maradona led Napoli to their previous Serie A title and the club’s fans will think it’s time to do it again.

domination of Naples

It happened. Napoli have been great for most of the season and fully deserve the Scudetto. They were particularly good at the start and went into the World Cup break unbeaten with 41 points out of a possible 45 and 37 goals scored in the 15 Serie A games played so far. They ended up reaching 90, 16 more than second-placed Lazio.

The success of Luciano Spalletti’s team is even more remarkable when you look at the changes they made to the squad last summer. Some of their longtime stars such as Lorenzo Insigne, Arkadiusz Milik, Fabian Ruiz and Kalidou Koulibaly left the city under Vesuvius to seek their fortune elsewhere, leaving enough room for others to come and take their places.

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Victor Osimkhen, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Frank Anguissa, Kim Min Jae, as well as loanees Giovani Simeone, Giacomo Raspadori and Tanguy Ndombele joined the club and did a wonderful job together with those who remained from the previous ones.

Spalletti never deviated from his 4-3-3 formation, but his players always had ample freedom to drift and change positions, understanding each other perfectly and often causing all sorts of problems for their opponents. Add to this the individual skill of Kvaratskhelia in handling the ball, the ruthlessness of Osimkhen in front of the opponent, the spirit of Stanislav Lobotka, the creativity of Petr Zelinsky and the purely defensive qualities of Kim, and you have a winning formula.

Juventus Mystery

It must have been a strange feeling for Juventus head coach Massimiliano Allegri and his players, a real emotional roller coaster if you like, just being at the club in the 2022/23 season and following the developments related to the disciplinary proceedings against the club for financial past offenses.

The Bianconeri were initially stripped of 15 points, dropping them from the top four to the bottom half of the table. And as soon as their form improved and they started climbing the stairs again, the points after the appeal were restored to their score, and they were back at the top. But it was quite clear that the case was not closed, but only sent to another round of evidence before a final verdict was issued.

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It all ended with another deduction – this time 10 points, and, as it turned out, quite enough for them to finish seventh with 62 points. After Roma lost to Sevilla in the Europa League final, Juventus are set to play in the Conference League next season. Those of their supporters who tend to look at things on the positive side will say it’s better than nothing, while others may think the competition may prove to be an unwanted distraction as they set about rebuilding their reputation in Serie A. .

Scramble for a flight

For a long time it seemed that Cremonese would take the last place in the table. Davide Ballardini’s team went through the entire first half of the campaign without a single victory, losing even Verona and Sampdoria along the way. But the demise of Sampdoria later proved to be truly catastrophic, and Dejan Stanković could do nothing but watch his team fall apart.

In the end, Sampdoria finished last with only 19 points – a really pathetic result. Cremonese didn’t stand much of a chance of avoiding relegation either, and their victory over Salernitana in the final round proved to be little more than a blast of pride on the condemned side.

As for Verona, they had hope until the last day of the game, and in the end they finished with the same result as Spezia. Both sides will now face off in a one-game play-off to be played at the Citta del Tricolor Stadium, a neutral venue for this game, otherwise Sassuolo’s home.

Three finals

Interestingly, Serie A is the only league in Europe to have played in the finals of all three UEFA competitions this season.

As already mentioned, Roma lost to Sevilla in the Europa League (on penalties), Fiorentina survived the grief late, losing to West Ham 2-1 in the conference league, and Inter will play the Premier League champions. league Manchester City. on Saturday, with the task of stopping Pep Guardiola’s expensive machinery from winning the Premier League-FA Cup-Champions League treble.

Few can see the Nerazzurri win this fight, but Simone Inzaghi will certainly prepare his team and work out tactical ideas.

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