Dino Zoff claims Juventus vs Napoli is not decisive and is not more significant than a normal Scudetto match. If anything, for once, the legendary goalkeeper is downplaying something.
The fixture itself has always been a guarantee for goals and entertainment. For a while, it was also a guarantee of points too, for Juventus anyway. Of the last 10 fixtures in Serie A, the Bianconeri have won five, Napoli have claimed just the two with three draws shared between them.
But amidst all the attempts to undersell the fixture - Marcello Lippi also guilty of this - as just another match in the race towards the league title, stands a quote which has teed up the occasion perfectly.
“We’re mad enough to go to Turin and impose our game on them,” Maurizio Sarri said of his team’s fifth visit to the Juventus Stadium. It’s a telling quote, one which, for an outsider, generates suspense and hype. If anything, it also sums up Napoli’s currently predicament rather poetically.
As Italy’s economy slumped, excitement within Serie A seemed to follow that same downward spiral. No less did the Partenopei who, under Rafael Benitez in 2014 had finished in third only to drop another two places when the dust settled on the 2014-15 season.
The madness of Sarri’s methods, though, has all of a sudden generated hype, not just amongst the bourgeoisie of Naples, but amongst the furthest reaches of the globe. Spanish newspaper El Mundo Deportivo likened it to the great El Clasico, while New York City's Mayor, Bill de Blasio, was also seen tweeting about it while waving a Napoli scarf.
