In a match in which two of the best coaches in Europe faced each other, Napoli tactician Maurizio Sarri was the one who was left unrewarded as his team succumbed to defeat against Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City.
The Partenopei lost 4-2 at home to City their Group F encounter in the Champions League on Wednesday night and the game should serve as a good indicator of how strong or not they are as a team.
Sarri and Guardiola are both preachers of beautiful football but the Catalan coach can rely on a squad with greater depth than what his Italian counterpart has to work with. Squad depth was not the only issue as the game also raised a couple of concerns with Sarri’s coaching methods.
For all the beauty that the Ciucciarelli’s football provides, the players have to make their system work. In the first 25 minutes, Napoli dominated the match and Lorenzo Insigne had given them the lead, but the momentum swung in Manchester City’s favour once Faouzi Ghoulam sustained a knee injury.
Based on this evidence, it seems that if one part of the Partenopei side is affected, then the rest of the side crumbles. Veteran defender Christian Maggio replaced the Algerian international in defence but he was not able to cope with the pace of City wingers Leroy Sane and Raheem Sterling.
Despite a fightback from the Neapolitans after going 2-1 down and then levelling the score with a Jorginho penalty, the Citizens were able to seal the win with two goals from swift counterattacks.
Since Sarri replaced Rafa Benitez in 2015, his coaching methods have dramatically improved the players and they frequently pass the ball with great confidence but for all the plaudits his system deserves, losing to Manchester City shows how important key personnel can be to a team.
Another flaw in his coaching is that he often leaves his substitutions until late in a match, even when his team are winning comfortably. Due to a lack of depth in the squad though, he often faces a conundrum whenever he has to make a change.
It is clear that Sarri has trust in his starting XI but perhaps he trusts them too much. He is the type of coach that focuses on the fine details but perhaps does not focus enough on how his reserves can fit into his system. Not everyone can fit into his 4-3-3 formation with consummate ease.
There are players that arguably deserve more trust such as midfielders Piotr Zielinski and Amadou Diawara but there are others such as Emanuele Giaccherini and Nikola Maksimovic who don’t suit Sarri’s philosophy.
Perhaps in January additional reinforcements have to be made to make up for the absences of
Ghoulam as well as Polish striker Arkadiusz Milik, or certain players will have to leave at the end of the 2017-18 season if they cannot adapt to Sarri’s methods.
Napoli play some of the most amazing football in Italy and deserve to be on top of Serie A but it seems that the squad is not strong enough yet to achieve success against Europe’s elite.
There are coaches that believe that systems make the players as opposed to the players making the system but Napoli’s defeat is an example of the players can make the system work or fail and not the other way round.
