MILAN (AP) — Antonio Conte started the season apologizing to the Napoli fans. He is ending it with those same supporters chanting his name.
Napoli beat Cagliari 2-0 on Friday, in the final round of Serie A, to see the title return to the southern city. It finished one point above defending champion Inter Milan.
There was little sign of that happening at the start of the season.
Conte’s first league match in charge of Napoli was a dismal 3-0 loss to Hellas Verona in the opening round. So poor was his team that Conte said he was “ashamed” and his players had “melted like snow in the sun.”
It was clear he had a lot of work to do.
Conte became Napoli’s fifth coach in little more than a year and the scudetto celebrations of 2023 seemed a distant memory, especially after Napoli delivered on the worst title defenses in Serie A history the previous season, finishing 10th.
Here are the keys to Napoli’s success in the 2024-25 Italian league:
Winning coach
Conte is no stranger to lifting the Serie A trophy.
He started Juventus’ dominance of Italian soccer, brought the Serie A title to Inter Milan for the first time in more than a decade, and has now transformed Napoli from title has-been back to league champion.
Conte led Juventus to the first three of its nine successive Serie A titles, in each of his three seasons in charge from 2011-14, and he triumphed again in his second season at Inter, in 2021.
In between that, he also bagged a Premier League title with Chelsea in 2017.
The 55-year-old coach was tasked with rejuvenating a troubled Napoli side when he took over last summer. And that’s precisely what he did.
Conte shook things up and transformed the squad with his strict, no-nonsense attitude and attention to detail.
Superstars out
Luciano Spalletti’s superstars have departed and been replaced by Conte’s titans.
Gone is Victor Osimhen, the forward who fired Napoli to the title in 2023. Gone is the dribbling wizard Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, or “Kvaradona.” Gone is defensive stalwart Kim Min-jae.
Only five regular starters from Spalletti’s team remained prominent this season: Goalkeeper Alex Meret, captain Giovanni Di Lorenzo, defender Amir Rrahmani and midfielders Stanislav Lobotka and Frank Anguissa.
But the replacements have more than been up to the task.
Conte convinced Romelu Lukaku to rejoin him at Napoli after the pair won at Inter, and the Belgian striker has filled in well for Osimhen, with 14 goals and 10 assists in the league.
Perhaps the biggest revelation has been midfielder Scott McTominay, who joined in August after playing for Manchester United his entire career.
McTominay, who is described by his Napoli teammates as “a special guy,” has been the driving force behind Napoli’s surge past Inter. He and Lukaku both scored against Cagliari. McToninay ended the season with 12 Serie A goals and was named the Italian league player of the season.
Distracted Inter
Just over a month ago, Inter was very much on course for a treble of trophies.
It had just beaten Bayern Munich in the Champions League quarterfinals, had a three-point lead over Napoli in Serie A and was in the semifinals of the Italian Cup.
But the treble talk proved little more than a distraction and the fight on all three fronts too much as three straight losses — without scoring — saw Inter dumped out of the Italian Cup and slip behind Napoli.
Inter still has the Champions League final against Paris Saint-Germain to look forward to next week after an extraordinary semifinal against Barcelona, that saw 13 goals scored across two legs.
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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Daniella Matar, The Associated Press
