Napoli, the anti-Italian football team on a glorious ride under Spalletti

It was the night before Christmas. At least that was how Luciano Spalletti felt before Napoli played Eintracht Frankfurt on Tuesday night. “It’s like when you leave some milk and biscuits out for Santa’s reindeer for when they pass by,” he said. “Playing a Champions League game is a celebration.”

One that Napoli glumly missed for two years until Spalletti’s appointment. How quickly has that absence been forgotten now everyone’s tipping them to win the thing? On the sidelines at Deutsche Bank Park, Cristiano Giuntoli, the sporting director who put together the team Pep Guardiola promised to watch last night, claimed to see “some tense faces” among the players he signed. “But it’s normal,” he said. “Some of them are almost making their debut (in the knock-out stages).”

Nobody knew how they’d react. After all, Cremonese, the only winless team in Europe’s top five leagues, knocked Napoli out of the Coppa Italia. Spalletti heavily rotated his team that night and not even the big guns could turn it around in 11 v 10 in extra time.

Frankfurt represented an altogether different proposition. The reigning Europa League champions have made a habit of going far in UEFA competitions over the last four years, as Spalletti knows only too well. Frankfurt eliminated his Inter Milan side at this stage of the Europa League in 2019 and they have a formidable reputation in knockout ties. Far more experience than Napoli who, as their captain Giovanni Di Lorenzo underlined, “have never been in the quarter-finals” of the Champions League.

Nevertheless, Giuntoli trusted in his players. “It’s the group that’s making the difference,” he said. “No one gets jealous. We’ve got a load of starters, hardly any reserves.” Napoli played hungrier than a herd of reindeer pulling Santa Spalletti’s sleigh in the hope of some milk and biscuits. Every game brings Napoli fans and football lovers like Pep, who already used to tune in to their fixtures when Maurizio Sarri was in charge, an overflowing sack of presents.

“Napoli play anti-Italian football,” Frankfurt head coach Oliver Glasner said. “They always have great intensity. Without the ball they play aggressively, pressing very high with a very intense counter-pressing. They are very different from other Italian teams.” And yet Spalletti has been proposing these ideas for a quarter of a century, often to spectacular effect. Beyond the granular, what distinguishes this Napoli team though is a trait associated with the proper football man of yesteryear: Desire.

It has been evident for weeks. Napoli’s fixture list has, on paper, looked easy of late. Games against Spezia, Cremonese and Sassuolo could have been taken lightly. The temptation to rotate or relax must have been great considering the 15-point gap between the league leaders and the rest in Serie A….