Napspam: Well, we won one of them
(When your silver lining is not so silver.)
As lots of kind people have pointed out, losing to Barca 5-0 is not so bad, because Real Madrid (and 586,519 other teams) lost to them 5-0 AS WELL. I’ll keep clinging to that. (Also, Stefano Borgonovo liked it. So there.)
The Mallorca win was nice, we got a bizarre baroque trophy for our collection and seeing as there’s a strike on, Britos’s injury won’t matter as much as it would have done. Er, yay?
Real Mallorca 0-1 Napoli (highlights)
Real Mallorca: Aouate, Zuiverloon, Nunes (46' Crespi), Ramis, Caceres, Alejandro, Marti, De Guzman, Tejera (57' Castro), Nsue, Tomer. Coach: M.Laudrup
Napoli: Rosati, Campagnaro (69' Fernandez), Aronica, Ruiz, Zuniga (82' Dezi), Donadel, Dzemaili (53’ Inler), Dossena, Mascara (56’ Hamsik, Hamsik’s hair), Santana (72' Maggio), Lucarelli. Coach: Mazzarri
Goals: 15' Zuniga
It’s nice to know, from Lavezzi’s tweets, that he’s still contributing something to the city of Napoli. (*Squints* What flavour is that? Rum and raisin? It would be oddly appropriate.)
The tifosi, meanwhile, were very pleased Cavani was back.
As was Inler, who appears to have been formally presented to Cavani in a creepy date-style thing. This was such a momentous occasion for him that he *sigh* made this photo his Facebook profile picture.
Dear god, Cavani, your T-shirt. How the hell old are you?
Fortunately, Inler wasn’t quite as smitten with the cooking staff... OH GOD HIS T-SHIRT IS EVEN WORSE.
And Donadel’s is... a crying shark? OK, it’ll have to do.
Before the match, a red thing tried to fuck Hamsik with a pole. That seemed a bad omen.
Inler, meanwhile, was just posing while photographers stalked him.
As usual. So, on to the match.
Rosati was better. He was much better. He was spectacular, making several great saves, at least one of which was with his foot; Captain Aronica dedicated the victory to him. There’s hope for the Raul-impersonator yet. (He was, indeed, so good that the photogs didn’t take a single photo of him, forcing me to use this “screenshot” that Napoli Magazine appear to have taken with their phone from a cathode ray TV.)
Interestingly, this appears to have been a remarkably gropy match. Observe my evidence:
Mallorcan on Santana, another Mallorcan on Donadel’s belly button,
Dzemaili on Mallorcan. (Daylife labelled this picture “Napoli’s Turkish midfielder Dzemaili”, which suggests they’ve got not only the wrong nationality but the wrong midfielder.)
Oh, right, our performance. Well, Lucarelli had another of his comedic close-range misses. Inler took a run down the right that came to nothing, Ruiz did some good defending and Hamsik took a shot that was too central.
More to the point, he pulled this face. Are there any photos of Hamsik that aren’t amazing?
Campagnaro came back after his car crash and was good. Mini-Monty Jacopo Dezi got another ten minutes at the end and managed not to give any goals away, and Dossena helped with the goal, so I suppose I can’t slag him off for having that throat rug.
Ah, wait, Mazzarri’s on it. Good work, Walter.
So, ye goal. Dossena fed the ball through to Santana, who provided an absolutely perfect assist. Zuniga only had to head it in.
At first he was very, very serious. (And sweaty; it was 35°C and 94% humidity, if you’re interested.)
Then he lightened up a bit, as did his penis,
And a (for once) very, very happy Santana came and rawred at him.
(For some reason, Donadel celebrated by hitting Lucarelli repeatedly over the head. We’ll draw a veil over that.)
And we won 1-0! Mazzarri was so pleased he tried to crotch-bump PCan. Rosati didn’t approve.
So we won this giant object, which is apparently the Trophy Ciutat de Palma, and which was so big the club had to make a special box for it and stick it in the hold of the plane in order to get it back to Napoli. Doh!
Both the captains held it, and the smudges even deigned to take a picture.
Then the rest of the team arrived and they buggered off, leaving NapMag to take another shot of the TV with their phone. Doh. (Lol @ Hamsik’s grinny little face.)
Think enough people turned up to the open training session?
Er. I’m assuming this wasn’t actually meant to be like this, though it does seem to sum up Lavezzi’s head rather well. (Correct version here.)
...And then they stripped off. GODDAMMIT, PHOTOGRAPHERS, THIS IS NO TIME TO ZOOM OUT! What are we paying you for?!
*Squints* Zuniga is still a bodybuilder... Is PCan snogging someone?
And now he seems to have moved on to Dzemaili, if that’s him in the white bib. Well! It’s nice to know he takes his captainly duties seriously.
“I don’t know, all these extraneous pieces of clothing. We wore next to nowt when I was a kid...” (For once, I aprrove of Mazzarri’s lecture.)
That bloody elephant again.
Well. *Sigh* I suppose I can’t put off Barcelona any longer.
Barcelona 5-0 Napoli (lowlights)
Barcelona: Pinto, Montoya (46’ Sergi Roberto), Fontas (63’ Twatty Busquets), Piquet (46’ Bartra), Adriano (63’ Abidal), Keita (63’ Mascherano), Thiago (63’ Xavi), Fabregas (58’ Messi), Kiko (46’ Dos Santos), Iniesta (46’ Cuenca), Villa (46’ Pedro). Coach: Guardiola
Napoli: De Sanctis (83’ Rosati), Campagnaro (83’ Grava), Cannavaro (83’ Fernandez), Britos (42' Aronica), Maggio (77’ Lucarelli), Inler (59’ Donadel), Dzemaili (63’ Gargano), Dossena (77’ Ruiz), Hamsik (68’ Santana), Hamsik’s hair, Lavezzi (59’ Zuniga), Cavani (68’ Mascara). Coach: Mazzarri
Goals: 26' Fabregas, 31' Keita, 62’ Pedro, 66’ Messi, 77’ Messi
Before the match Messi sneaked into Napoli’s hotel to see Lavezzi, and Sanchez turned up to see Inler. No, they weren’t shagging, just talking and stuff. Er, allegedly. (They also brought David Villa along for some reason.) I am extremely disappointed that nobody managed to sneak any photos, and thus I am forced to use one of Lavezzi’s Twitpics of his Argentine posse. [Edit: his Spanish-speaking posse. Sorry, Ruiz.]
Before the match, Mazzarri and his allies sat on The Bench of Darkness.
The actual players, meanwhile, wandered around on the pitch with whoever takes pictures for Inler’s Facebook.
At first, they managed to look quite chipper, not to mention show off some nice brown calves.
Er, then it slipped.
The good side of playing Barcelona: more and bigger pictures of Napoli than you ever thought you’d see. The bad side of playing Barcelona: everything else.
...Is it just me, or are the other lot smirking and cackling like they’re already taking pleasure in our humiliation? Stop rubbing it in, you fuckers!
Line-up photo: the most chaotic since Mutu did his fainting thing for Fiorentina. Perfect!
Oh, no, they’ve got it sorted. That must be why they lost.
Mazzarri: “Fuck off and take someone else’s picture. You know we’re going to get slaughtered.”
20 Napoli tifosi (OK, 8,000): “WE DON’T!”
Poor, noble Morgan.
He wasn’t bad at all, but when you play against this team, you tend to see the ball fly past you quite a lot.
He made a great save on Villa, but spent most of his time jumping about helplessly, trying to get to impossible balls while his defenders flapped. Rosati came on for him later, and got so annoyed that he ran a mile out of his box to play defence himself.
(The woodwork was good, though; it stopped about six shots in five minutes. Evidently Barca were experimenting with magnetic goalposts, but forgot about the changing ends thing.)
So, er, this is how the goalies spent most of the match.
Britos spent the match perfecting his silly faces.
Look, brilliance! Better than his play, since he was out of position a lot of the time. Oh, and he also broke one of his metatarsals and, according to Napoli Magazine, will be out for two months. What joy.
He also watched with great interest while Inler played.
This is Gargano. His ears were big.
At least one commentator is saying he was teeeerrible: “the usual mistakes”. Ouch.
PCan erred on the first goal, but overall wasn’t too bad, relatively speaking.
(Holy shit. Has Maggio borrowed someone else’s abs there?)
Campagnaro and Ruiz, of whom there are no pictures, were pretty dodgy. Everyone seems agreed that the defence at the moment is not CL-worthy; our wall on that FK was particularly horrid.
The exception was Aronica, who made a magnificent clearance from the goal-line when the keeper was beaten, and of whom there are NO DAMN PHOTOS. Sigh.
Here are Dzemaili’s Forehead Wrinkles Of Doom, of which we’re going to be seeing quite a lot. (Villa seems to find them pretty impressive.)
Like everyone else, he did not do too well. Google Translated TuttoNapoli was succinct: “Gossamer.”
However, all is not lost: he can win balls in the air over short Barca men,
his veins are nice and his ballet is lovely.
(The second most important discovery of this match: Napoli have a colour-changing kit. Oh, wonderful.)
How I wish we could see the face Gokhan’s pulling here...
Inler and his scary eyebrows were much better than Dzemaili, not that that’s actually saying very much.
Tutto Napoli reckon he “fought like a lion in the midfield”, but they may be a teeny weeny bit biased.
(Good to see Fabregas looks permanently scared of him, though.)
Dossena, depressingly enough, was good again.
Couldn’t get forward much, but his defending was good, and the left side seemed secure while he was there.
...No, Andrea, that kid with the big hair does not find your beard attractive. Shave. Now.
For some reason, there’s a billion pictures of Maggio. Who’s ordering all the Maggio?
*Suspicious* Is one of you lot writing to Getty constantly saying “Give us more chin”?
Anyway, his performance: not great. He tried to push down the right, but didn’t get anywhere.
Couldn’t get any crosses in, didn’t help Campagnaro defend... I see no reason for the Maggio love! *Bangs fist*
Also, there’s not a single picture of Donadel, though I’m not as disappointed as I expected to be because Puyol was injured and couldn’t play. (Well, really. Can you imagine those two up against each other? THE BATTLE OF THE HAIR.)
(Here, have him and Monty and Dainelli with their missuses instead.)
Hamsik: GRRR.
Did his best and asissted Cavani, but unfortunately was slightly offside for the Bicycle Kick of Glory. (And to underline the unfairness of the Maggio-fest: only two pictures of Hamsik! SCANDAL.)
Lavezzi wasn’t too bad, but couldn’t achieve anything useful, either.
(As if the hotel visit wasn’t enough, Tutto Napoli hilariously suggested that he was working extra hard so as to impress Messi. Did everyone but me already know about this relationship? And what does PCan think?)
He also got a card for carrying on playing because he didn’t hear the whistle. Luck was not with us. (The Barcelonisti seem to be dragging him backwards by his arms to slow him down a lot, though - perhaps that’s encouraging?)
He passed the time with a particularly well-developed skill of his: pulling faces at the ball.
The “oh, shit”.
The “blow football”.
The “I want to fuck you”.
The “I wish I’d trained instead of going on holiday in Sardegna”. (I jest; considering his escapade, he was in remarkably good form. Most suspicious.)
Oh, wait: he hasn’t got the energy to walk all the way over to Mazzarri for a hand-pat. Lavezzi does not go to the coach, the coach comes to Lavezzi.
(Zuniga came on for Pocho in the second half. The photogs don’t seem to have noticed he was there and I’m not entirely sure anyone else did, either.)
So. Cavani.
Our one good player.
Admittedly, one who needs to practise that fine art known as “shooting only when everyone is onside”.
He worked away but wasn’t really at his best for most of the match. Nobody cares about that, however, because all they can think about (with pretty good reason) are his two non-goals.
Because the first one was amazing.
(It had the added feature of almost kicking Piqué in the face, but I don’t think that was intentional.)
“...Wait. Wait. What?”
Lucarelli: “Oh, shit.”
Hamsik had been offside by about an inch. Cavani was in a state of disbelief.
As was, well, everybody else.
And then he went and did it again later, with the same result. (This one was very clearly offside, no room for dispute.)
(Is it just me, or is Mazzarri trying to make himself completely grey? Does this offer some benefit to coaches, like helping them blend in with the general gloom and despair or something?)
Cavani was pissed off.
He took his cheekbones and his colour-changing kit, and he went home.
(Inler is multi-talented: in addition to playing football and looking fit, he can bring the slower members of the audience up to speed.)
Here is some small comfort in the form of Lavezzi’s torso. (OK, I don’t think it’s actually from the end of the match, but it seems to fit nicely here.)
(Lucarelli did the same, but I’m not embedding that.)
PCan annoyingly kept his undershirt on, but he does get points for not laughing at Cesc’s bra.
(Oh, and Aronica kissed Messi, although we don’t have any pictures. How does Lavezzi feel about this?)
Then everyone stood basking in their failure while Mazzari once again told Dossena that the beard had to go.
In reward for our efforts we received a short, fat trophy, which bore a fitting resemblance to Lavezzi.
(Under the circumstances, PCan did quite a good job of looking pleased.)
And, just to add insult to injury, were denied the opportunity to be decorated by this AMAZING WOMAN. Barcelona = sadists.
I would tell you when the next match would be, but nobody knows cos the players are on strike.