Napoli hope former boss Walter Mazzarri can bring fresh flavour on his return
Nostalgia and romance were in the air in Naples this week. Fabio Cannavaro has bought the club’s old training ground and plans to turn the wasteland, disused for 20 years, into a centre of excellence for young Napoli players.
Cannavaro was a youth trainee at the Centro Paradiso back when Diego Maradona was the first team’s superstar — there is still a mural of the Argentine with his then young daughter Dalma on one of the crumbling walls.
‘I want to restore it to its former beauty for the young people of the neighbourhood,’ Cannavaro said. ‘The targets I had when I played here were surpassed beyond my imagining. I used to turn up to training on the Vespa that the woman who is now my wife lent me, and then I switched to a Fiat Uno. I was already living the dream.’
Just as nostalgic, but nowhere near as romantic has been the club’s decision last week to bring back former Watford boss Walter Mazzarri, who managed Napoli from 2009 to 2013.
Napoli’s defence of their first Scudetto in 33 years was always going to be difficult, but a managerial change in November, and with Real Madrid, Inter Milan and Juventus in three of their next four games, suggests their title defence could turn out to be even worse than expected.
He had risen to the top in Italy before arriving at Vicarage Road in 2016. He only lasted a year — leading Watford to a 17th-placed Premier League finish with an uninspiring brand of football that meant Hornets fans were not particularly sorry to see him go.
Four good years at Napoli had meant Inter went chasing after him and, much to the ire of Napoli owner Aurelio De Laurentiis, he walked away. The jilted De Laurentiis said: ‘If your wife wants to sleep with someone else, what can you do; she’ll sleep with someone
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