Rudi Garcia insisted that all he wanted to do was “to make our supporters happy”. “It’s been too long since we won a game at home,” he told Italy’s Sky Sport as his Napoli team prepared to kick off against Empoli. “That’s extra motivation for us. We want to do everything we can.”
Those might have been his final remarks as manager of the Partenopei. Napoli lost 1-0 and the club’s owner, Aurelio De Laurentiis, imposed a press silence at full-time. He was understood to be exploring his options to replace Garcia on Monday, a decision that some fans might celebrate even more enthusiastically than a win.
The Frenchman’s appointment this summer was a perplexing one to begin. Napoli had just won their first Serie A title in 33 years, and most people expected them to either name a proven winner or an up-and-coming young coach to succeed Luciano Spalletti. Instead, they went with one whose only major silverware was claimed at Marseille more than a decade ago.
De Laurentiis further undermined the appointment by acknowledging in interviews that Garcia was not his first choice. “I interviewed Thiago Motta,” he said last month. “But he didn’t want to risk taking the place of a manager who achieved everything [Spalletti] achieved. I called Luis Enrique, but luckily for us he went to France instead – look at the results he’s getting.”
There were, according to De Laurentiis, “many others”. To hear him talk was to wonder if Napoli had settled on Garcia almost by chance. The only criteria clearly stated by De Laurentiis at the time was that he wanted a manager comfortable working with a 4-3-3.
For the first time this season, Garcia abandoned that formation on Sunday, trying out a new 4-2-3-1. The idea was to find a shape that would allow him to deploy Giacomo Raspadori behind Giovanni Simeone in the centre of the attack – spreading the goalscoring burden for a team that has had to do without the injured Victor Osimhen since the middle of last month.
More confounding was the decision to leave Khvicha Kvaratskhelia out of his starting XI. “Dropped is an ugly word,” he said in his pre-game interview. “This is just a way for Kvicha to catch his breath and he will make the difference in the second half.”
He almost did. Kvaratskhelia replaced Eljif Elmas shortly before the hour mark, with the scores still level at 0-0, and went on to enjoy two of the best chances of the game.
The first arrived in the 79th minute, when he froze a defender with a trademark shift of weight from right foot to left, making space to fire in at the near post. He went across goal with his next shot, from a similar position, in the 89th, but both times was denied by excellent saves from the goalkeeper Etrit Berisha.
All that was left was for Empoli to punish Napoli with an injury-time goal from one of their own substitutes, Viktor Kovalenko. To call this an upset might be understating it. Empoli began the weekend 19th in the table, having scored just four goals and conceded 21 in their opening 11 games.
At the same time, though, was it really a surprise? Napoli are the reigning champions and remain in the top four even after this defeat, yet they had been fortunate to draw four days earlier at home to a Union Berlin team that arrived on a 12-match losing streak. Garcia’s team have been inexcusably fragile at their own stadium, winning just two out of eight across all competitions.
Succeeding Spalletti was always going to be a tough task, but three months into this season we can say that things have not been trending in a good direction under Garcia. Although he initially preserved his predecessor’s 4-3-3, Napoli lost the fluidity that made it work.
Spalletti encouraged his players to trust their instincts and flow into the spaces that opponents left to them rather than sticking to any rigid formation. Garcia’s Napoli have lacked the confidence to take those decisions, burdened either by too many new instructions or too few.
Worse, the team’s leaders often appeared to be at odds with him. Kvaratskhelia made an exasperated gesture after being subbed off in the 89th minute of a draw with Genoa. Osimhen gave an even more direct show of dissent when he was withdrawn late in a 0-0 with Bologna one week later, raising two fingers and protesting that Napoli ought to be chasing a goal with a pair of strikers up top.
It is easy to point out things that aren’t working, however, and harder to identify a replacement manager willing and able to fix them. De Laurentiis is reported to have contacted Antonio Conte about replacing Garcia last month, but the former Serie A and Premier League winner was not interested in taking over someone else’s broken project.
Several leading Italian media outlets named Igor Tudor as the frontrunner on Monday. De Laurentiis is said to be seeking a traghettatore – a ferryman who can steady the ship and steer Napoli safely to a top-four finish, giving the club time to reflect and make more permanent decisions at the end of the season.
The former Spain midfielder, Cesc Fàbregas, will take temporary charge of Como following the departure of Moreno Longo, the Italian Serie B club announced on Monday. The appointment marks the senior managerial debut for the 36-year-old former Arsenal, Barcelona and Chelsea man following his retirement from playing in July. Fàbregas played 17 games in Italy's second-tier with Como last season before announcing his retirement in the summer and becoming the club's youth team coach. Como are sixth in the standings, having defeated Ascoli 1-0 away from home on Saturday thanks to an early goal by the former Wolves forward Patrick Cutrone. Fabregas's first game in charge will be against Feralpisalò at home on 25 November. Reuters
Tudor, who has coached in Italy, Croatia, Greece, Turkey and France, comes with the added advantage of having worked with Simeone at Verona – helping the striker to produce the most prolific season of his career in 2021-22. Other candidates have also been suggested, including the former Napoli centre-back Fabio Cannavaro, who was sitting with De Laurentiis in the stands on Sunday.
The unanswered question in all this is whether a change of manager will address the cause of Napoli’s problems or simply the symptoms. Garcia has made questionable choices but also been undermined by leadership. De Laurentiis was reported to have gone into his changing room at half-time on Sunday to speak to the players directly.
Sassuolo 2-2 Salernitana, Genoa 1-0 Verona, Lecce 2-2 Milan, Juventus 2-1 Cagliari, Monza 1-1 Torino, Napoli 0-1 Empoli, Fiorentina 2-1 Bologna, Udinese 1-1 Atalanta, Lazio 0-0 Roma, Inter 2-0 Frosinone
Spalletti was not the only one to leave Napoli after their title win. Cristiano Giuntoli, the sporting director who signed Kvaratskhelia and Osimhen, departed for Juventus. Francesco Sinatti, the club’s athletic trainer, also quit before taking up a position with the Italian national team. Their simultaneous exits left a leadership vacuum, with fewer voices who can challenge De Laurentiis.
Garcia boarded an EasyJet flight to Nice on Monday, flying to spend time with his family at the start of this international break, and plenty of supporters would be happy for him not to come back. The older ones will remember, though, how fleeting success can be. When Napoli last won the league title, back in 1990, they followed up a year later by finishing eighth.
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Inter Milan | 12 | 23 | 31 |
| 2 | Juventus | 12 | 12 | 29 |
| 3 | AC Milan | 12 | 6 | 23 |
| 4 | Napoli | 12 | 11 | 21 |
| 5 | Atalanta | 12 | 9 | 20 |
| 6 | Fiorentina | 12 | 4 | 20 |
| 7 | Roma | 12 | 8 | 18 |
| 8 | Bologna | 12 | 3 | 18 |
| 9 | Monza | 12 | 2 | 17 |
| 10 | Lazio | 12 | 0 | 17 |
| 11 | Torino | 12 | -4 | 16 |
| 12 | Frosinone | 12 | -3 | 15 |
| 13 | Genoa | 12 | -3 | 14 |
| 14 | Lecce | 12 | -3 | 14 |
| 15 | Sassuolo | 12 | -5 | 12 |
| 16 | Udinese | 12 | -7 | 11 |
| 17 | Empoli | 12 | -16 | 10 |
| 18 | Cagliari | 12 | -12 | 9 |
| 19 | Verona | 12 | -9 | 8 |
| 20 | Salernitana | 12 | -16 | 5 |
