What could have been: Napoli flames out after bright start in Madrid
“La faccia tosta.” It is a common Italian phrase with no direct English equivalent. The words translate literally to “the hard face,” but most dictionaries would give you something more like “chutzpah”.
To truly get the sense of it, you need to put it into a sentence. To approach a situation with “la faccia tosta” is to do so with a certain brazen audacity. An Italian who exclaims “Che faccia tosta!” is effectively saying: “What nerve!”
It is exactly what the Napoli manager, Maurizio Sarri, wanted to see from his players at the Santiago Bernabeu. “It’s indispensable,” he told reporters at his Tuesday press conference. “To play a fearful game for us would be counterproductive. We need to have a faccia that is as tosta as is possible. We need to have the foolishness to come here and play our own game.”
Who better to reinforce that message than Diego Maradona? Sarri expressed the hope that Napoli’s greatest icon might offer his team a pre-game pep talk, and that is exactly what happened – the Argentinian stopping by their locker room shortly before kick-off.
Related – Look: Maradona delivers pre-match talk to Napoli ahead of Real Madrid tie
And who better to receive that message than Lorenzo Insigne? The lone Neapolitan in Napoli’s starting XI, he is too young to have seen Maradona playing in the flesh, but grew up with a keen awareness of what this man meant to his city. Their personalities are in many ways different, but la faccia tosta is a trait they most certainly both share.
Insigne showed his to the world in the eighth minute on Wednesday. Receiving a pass from Marek Hamsik some 30 yards from goal, he did not even look up before shooting first-time towards the bottom right corner of the Madrid goal. He had already checked on Keylor Navas’ position a moment earlier, and knew that the goalkeeper was poorly placed – too far advanced and drifting towards the opposite post.
The ball nestled in the back of the net, and the less than 4,000 Napoli fans – well, that was the official count, anyway – at the Bernabeu roared loud enough to make you believe that they were the majority present. In that moment, it seemed as though Sarri had been vindicated. A team whose annual revenues is barely one-fifth those of Madrid really could come here and win by playing its own game.
It was a thrilling thought. And also, a totally misleading one.
Madrid was level by half-time and would already have been ahead if not for poor finishing. Karim Benzema headed his team level in the 18th minute but then side-footed wide in the 42nd with the goal gaping. In-between those two efforts, Cristiano Ronaldo scooped a shot over from 12 yards.
Perhaps Sarri should have heeded this warning. He had an opportunity to change things up at half-time, to encourage his team to show a little more caution. Instead, Napoli conceded twice within 10 minutes of returning from the interval.
Toni Kroos was permitted far too much space for the strike which put Madrid in front. Madrid’s third – and let’s be clear here, we’re taking nothing away from Casemiro or his extraordinary finish – was preceded by Pepe Reina putting his team in trouble with a Cruyff turn on the edge of his own six-yard box, when a simple clearance might have sufficed.
Related – Watch: Casemiro uncorks thunderous volley for rampant Real Madrid
Napoli avoided a knock-out blow. The Italian side prevented Madrid from scoring again, and at times threatened to grab another of its own. Dries Mertens blew the best chance, firing over after a brilliant combination from Amadou Diawara and Jose Callejon had delivered the ball to his feet just beside the Madrid penalty spot.
In isolated moments, Napoli could still be spell-binding. Diawara, a 19-year- old Guinean making his third-ever start in this competition, strode through midfield with the confidence of a man who owns this stage – not one who was playing for San Marino’s club side as recently as 2015. In one stand-out passage, he navigated past tackles from Benzema, Kroos and Casemiro using a sum total of four touches.
It is not enough, though, to flash brilliance at this level. You need to be able to sustain it. The only question by the end of Wednesday’s game was whether Madrid ought to have won by a wider margin.
Sarri might argue that this outcome was the best his team could have hoped for. There is no guarantee that a more cautious approach would have yielded a better result against an opponent whose resources are greater.
As he put it so eloquently in that same Tuesday press conference, “there is no antidote against talent.”
Equally, though, it would be patronising to give Sarri a free pass. There is a tendency, still, to focus on his back story, the romantic tale of the bank worker who became a full-time coach, even though he has had Napoli competing at the top end of Serie A for two years now. He has beaten a Juventus side who would not perceive itself as unworthy of standing toe-to- toe with Madrid.
It is at least reasonable to ask, then, whether he could have done with an extra body in midfield, where Madrid seemed to win so many 50-50s, or whether it would have made sense to have his overmatched defence sit a little deeper. And why wait until the 75th minute to make a first substitution, at least throwing some fresh legs into a game where some players seemed to be struggling with the intensity?
These were questions touched on by the Napoli owner, Aurelio De Laurentiis, who expressed frustration in a post-game interview with Mediaset. “You cannot always play with a high line,” he said. “And you can change your tactics every now and then.”
What we can say with a certainty is that the task before Napoli now is a daunting one. It will take a lot more than a little audacity, nerve or chutzpah to turn around this deficit at the Stadio San Paolo.
