Last year, Napoli and Lazio finished first and second in Serie A. When they meet on Sunday, they’ll be fighting for fourth place.
Both teams had woeful starts to this season but while matters have much improved for Lazio, Napoli’s form remains so poor that rumors are swirling of a potential third coach in less than a year for the defending champion.
French coach Rudi Garcia started the season but was fired in November. Results have hardly improved under Walter Mazzarri, who has won five of his 13 matches in all competitions. Napoli is eighth in Serie A and 21 points behind leader Juventus.
Even before Napoli lost in the Italian Super Cup final on Monday, there were reports that club president Aurelio De Laurentiis was set to meet with José Mourinho after the Portuguese coach was fired by Roma.
However, there were already flickering signs of improvement. Napoli won its last Serie A match before the trip to Saudi Arabia for the Super Cup. Although it needed a late goal to beat bottom club Salernitana 2-1, that snapped a run of four matches without a win or even a goal for Mazzarri’s team.
Napoli — without key players including Victor Osimhen because of the Africa Cup of Nations or injury — went on to beat Fiorentina 3-0 in the Super Cup semifinal in Riyadh before narrowly losing to Inter Milan 1-0 while playing half an hour with 10 men after Giovanni Simeone was sent off.
Napoli was incensed by the sending off and other refereeing decisions and no one spoke to the media apart from De Laurentiis.
“It is a Napoli that is going through changes, different new players are coming in and we are destined to change,” he said.
“Credit to the winners, but I saw a Napoli team that is growing. With 10 men and with various absentees the team made life difficult for Inter.”
Lazio fared much worse against Inter as it was humiliated 3-0 in their semifinal last Friday.
That halted a run of five straight wins for Lazio, during which it conceded only two goals, including a confidence-boosting victory over city rival Roma to reach the Italian Cup semifinals.
“There is a gap between us and Inter but it’s not as large as what we saw,” Lazio coach Maurizio Sarri said after the Super Cup loss.
“The team seemed scared, we were late to everything. It’s happened before where we’ve had blackouts after a run of positive matches, but not like this. Losing in this way really annoys me.”
Lazio was sixth in the league, just a point behind fourth-placed Fiorentina and two above Napoli ahead of the match in Rome. Fiorentina hosts Inter on Sunday.
“There are lessons in all negative experiences, I said that to the team after the match,” Sarri said. “If we want to compete we have to have something more in terms of tactics and determination.
“It’s a big lesson and we need to take it forward.”
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