The Weekly Take, Issue 334: Sometimes, the Quick Fix Works

To say that Napoli’s Serie A title defense last season was a feeble one would certainly be an understatement. The season before, the Campanian club won the Scudetto for the first time in 33 years by a massive 16-point margin over league runners-up Inter Milan. After such a dominant league campaign in 2022-23, Napoli appeared primed to run it back and make a serious push for back-to-back Serie A titles.

However, Napoli’s 2023-24 season could not have been more different. Before the season began, head coach Luciano Spalletti left his position to accept the then-vacant job at the helm of the Italian national team. Rudi Garcia took over; however, results were underwhelming and Garcia was fired in November 2023. Garcia was replaced by Walter Mazzarri who made no improvements whatsoever; he too was dismissed in short order. Francesco Calzona took over for the Tuscan.

Napoli didn’t even come close to replicating the success of the season prior. So dismal was their play that home matches which ended in their players being booed off the field started to become commonplace as the end of the season approached. When it was all over, Napoli finished just 10th in the league with just 53 points, missing out on a Champions League spot by a whopping 15 points. Napoli finished in their lowest league placement since the 2008-09 season when they were 12th.

Unsurprisingly, Napoli overhauled just about everything this past off-season. A major pickup came in the dugout when they landed Antonio Conte as Calzona’s replacement. A four-time Serie A champion over the course of his coaching career, Conte was widely expected to bring stability to Stadio Diego Armando Maradona following the chaos of the prior season.

In the transfer window, Napoli spent heavily yet prudently. Instead of going all-in on a top-tier superstar, Napoli shelled out more than €150 million over six players including Scott McTominay, Alessandro Buongiorno, and Romelu Lukaku who’d be tasked with matching the goalscoring output of former star striker Victor Osimhen whose frayed relationship with the club led to his loan stint at Galatasaray. Napoli also picked up Leonardo Spinazzola on a free transfer from Roma.

All these changes have clearly worked - Napoli have already built a healthy lead on top of Serie A and have just extended it with a 2-0 victory over AC Milan. Lukaku opened the scoring in the fifth minute before Khvicha Kvaratskhelia clinched all three points with Napoli’s second goal shortly before half-time.

Turnarounds like what has been happening at Napoli don’t come around all too often. Perhaps the most important thing that has to be pointed out regarding their hot start has to be how they finessed the transfer market. In Lukaku and McTominay, Napoli picked up two players who were still capable of being high-level starters but whose stock happened to be low at the time. Landing centre-back Buongiorno for €35 million was also a very savvy acquisition; Buongiorno was fresh off a breakout season for his hometown club Torino in which he emerged as the club’s best player. At 25, he still likely has his absolute peak ahead of him as well.

The hiring of Conte has turned out to be a masterstroke. As was the case with Lukaku and McTominay, Conte’s stock was at an all-time low after having left Tottenham Hotspur in controversial circumstances in March 2023. Conte had not returned to the touchline since. Once again, Napoli understood exactly what Conte brought to the table and made the move that’s likely been the primary catalyst behind their return to the top of the league.

Speaking after Napoli’s victory over Milan, Conte claimed that Napoli’s main target this season was to secure a return to continental tournament play in 2025-26. However, it’s already obvious that this was far too modest an objective. This revamped Napoli team is genuinely very impressive - and it appears to be sustainable as well. This isn’t a team being carried by the brilliance of one or two elite players. It’s a well-rounded unit that right now might be the most underrated team there is.

Not many would have expected Napoli to right the ship as quickly as they did. However, unlike what a lot of other clubs in their position might’ve done, Napoli figured out what they needed to do and made all the right moves instead of any reckless, ill-advised ones. There’s no reason why they can’t go on to make it two Serie A titles in three seasons.

The Weekly Take, Issue 333: #ŞahinOut

First off, I would like to speak for myself as a Borussia Dortmund fan. Die Schwarzgelbe's most recent Champions League match against Real Madrid, especially in the second half, was one of the most abject and inept displays I have ever seen from the club in my 14 years as a Dortmund fan.

Despite carrying a 2-0 lead into half-time of their away match against Real in the third Champions League matchday of the league phase, Dortmund capitulated after the break, giving up five goals, including a second-half Vinícius Júnior hat-trick, to lose 5-2. Dortmund's first-half goals scored by Donyell Malen and Jamie Bynoe-Gittens unexpectedly put them in a commanding position heading into the break - but after it, Dortmund did what they've done for so much of this season, effectively rolling over and surrendering as soon as Real netted their first goal via Antonio Rüdiger in the 60th minute.

Vinícius scored Real's equalizer just two minutes later before a trio of late goals from the 83rd minute to stoppage time - one by Lucas Vázquez, two by Vinícius - finished Dortmund off and ensured that this rematch of last season's Champions League final would have the same outcome.

While there's certainly much blame to be passed around in the wake of Dortmund's loss, one person in particular deserves the bulk of it - and anyone who has been following what has been going on at Signal Iduna Park this season knows exactly who that person is.

There is a reason almost the entire fanbase hated the off-season hire of Nuri Şahin who has since proven that he's completely out of his depth coaching Dortmund. The sooner he's fired, the better off Dortmund will be. Including me, basically the entire fanbase ran out of patience weeks ago - and this latest disasterclass is further evidence of that. Şahin made a series of tactical errors that cost Dortmund the victory - and some of these errors were the type which even an ordinary fan sitting on the couch could easily have pointed out.

The most notable of these errors was his decision to substitute English winger Bynoe-Gittens in the 55th minute, bringing in centre-back Waldemar Anton. While it's understandable that Şahin wanted to prioritize protecting the 2-0 lead which Dortmund already had, Şahin could scarcely have made a worse substitution. For one thing, Bynoe-Gittens had been Dortmund's best player up to that point and if at any point Dortmund would need to switch from defense back to offense, Bynoe-Gittens would've likely been the key player to make that happen.

In addition, Anton is a centre-back. At the very least, Şahin could've brought in a full-back to ensure that Dortmund's tactical setup was minimally compromised. It thus came as little surprise that just seven minutes after the substitution, Real scored two goals to tie it at 2-2. Obviously, the only thing that Şahin was thinking was "bring in a defender to shore up the defense and protect the lead" without even giving himself a split-second to think of what the best way to do so would've been.

Şahin also substituted Norwegian right-back Julian Ryerson and replaced him with central midfielder Emre Can. Playing out of position, Can was woefully unprepared to guard Vinícius - and it clearly showed in Vinícius' second and Real's fourth goal when he offered next to no resistance in letting the Brazilian winger stride past him and subsequently run all the way down the pitch for an uncontested solo goal.

Despite being a club icon as a player who spent ten and a half seasons at Dortmund including five and a half as a starter, there was a reason that the fans were apprehensive about Şahin's hiring - and they have been proven right. Şahin's utter incompetence hits new depths nearly every week. Even just two months into the season, Şahin has already done so much damage to Dortmund's season that they already find themselves playing catch-up in the race for a top-four Bundesliga finish and a spot in next season's Champions League.

Quite frankly, even much-maligned former Borussia Dortmund head coaches Peter Stöger and Peter Bosz look like tactical geniuses in comparison to Nuri Şahin - let alone their successors Lucien Favre and Edin Terzić. If Şahin isn't canned by the start of the mid-season break, Dortmund are highly unlikely to come away from this season with anything of note apart from misery and underachievement.

The Weekly Take, Issue 332: Already a One-Season Wonder?

Last season, VfB Stuttgart came out of absolutely nowhere to finish second in the Bundesliga and even finished ahead of Bayern Munich who had won the previous 11 league titles in a row. It was Stuttgart's best league finish since clinching the Meisterschale back in the 2006-07 in one of the most memorable endings to a Bundesliga season of all time. Additionally, Stuttgart finished with 73 points to set a new club record. Stuttgart's 2023-24 season was a remarkable turnaround from their prior campaign when they only avoided relegation to the 2. Bundesliga by beating Hamburg SV over a two-legged playoff.

By far the biggest off-season story surrounding Stuttgart was the departure of star striker Serhou Guirassy to Borussia Dortmund. Die Schwarzgelbe brought the Guinean to Signal Iduna Park for the astonishingly low transfer fee of just €17.5 million. The season before, Guirassy had a breakout campaign, spearheading Stuttgart's rise to second place in the Bundesliga by netting 28 league goals, accounting for more than a third of every league goal scored by a Stuttgart player.

Following Guirassy's departure, Stuttgart have unsurprisingly gotten off to a slow start this season - a point driven home by their capitulation in a 4-0 away loss against Bayern Munich. Stuttgart never looked for a moment as though they even had a chance and were evidently outclassed right from opening kick-off. Somewhat surprisingly, it took Bayern until the second half to make it onto the scoresheet, but they never looked back as soon as they did. Harry Kane scored a second-half hat-trick to seal the victory for Bayern and keep them in first place in the league. Substitute Kingsley Coman then finished things off with Bayern's fourth goal in the 89th minute.

With this loss, Stuttgart are now ninth in the league; their chances of finishing in the top four and qualifying for next season's Champions League are certainly not the best at the moment. Many of Stuttgart's sequences of play in this match summed up how their season has gone thus far. It seemed as though every time Stuttgart would be on the brink of putting something together, they'd inevitably have a misplay and blow a possible chance for a goalscoring opportunity.

To make matters worse, as soon as Kane scored Bayern's first goal in the 57th minute, Stuttgart just flat-out collapsed. That goal seemed to have drained Stuttgart of whatever fighting spirit they might have previously had - something that shows a stark and alarming contrast when compared to this same Stuttgart team from last season. The Stuttgart side of the 2023-24 Bundesliga campaign would definitely not have mentally checked out after going a goal behind but instead have fought tooth and nail to get an equalizer. That was just about the exact opposite of what Stuttgart showed in their collapse at the Allianz Arena.

Of course, much of Stuttgart's drop-off can indeed be attributed to Guirassy's departure from MHPArena. While Deniz Undav and new signing Ermedin Demirović have been pulling their weight up front, neither are at the level at which they can truly step in for an elite player like Guirassy. Though Undav does have four league goals thus far, two of them came in Stuttgart's 5-1 thrashing of Dortmund - a result which had many people thinking that Stuttgart were once again legit and a serious threat to make the top four.

However, there's a case to be made that Guirassy was the best player in the entire league last season. Though Undav and Demirović aren't scrubs by any means, there were times last season when Guirassy all but put the rest of the Stuttgart team on his back, dragging the team to wins that they'd never have had a serious chance of getting without him.

Finally, Stuttgart have been extremely inconsistent so far this season. Their performance against Bayern could not have been more opposite to their mauling of Dortmund a month ago. Stuttgart can't seem to string good performances together - and as a result, they've already lost early ground in the chase for a Champions League berth.

Could it have been possible that VfB Stuttgart caught lightning in a bottle for one season and rode it all the way through? Early signs this season show that it very well could've been the case. While there's still more than enough time for Stuttgart to turn it around, their backs are already against the wall not even a quarter of the way into the 2024-25 season.

The Weekly Take, Issue 331: Don Andrés Calls Time on a Generational Career

One of the greatest to ever step onto a football pitch has called it a career after a legendary 23-year career. At a recent press conference, Andrés Iniesta announced his retirement following a career which included the following titles: four Champions Leagues, nine La Liga titles, six Copa del Rey titles, two European Championships, and of course, the 2010 World Cup in which the man from Fuentealbilla scored the only goal to land Spain’s only world title to date.

Iniesta’s story actually begins almost two years before he made his professional debut with Barcelona B in 2001. Back in 1999, Iniesta led his Barça under-15 team to victory in the Nike Premier Cup, a tournament for the junior divisions of competing football clubs. Iniesta scored the winning goal in the final and was named player of the tournament. After the final, Pep Guardiola, who was then playing for Barça and years later would coach Iniesta at Camp Nou, remarked to teammate and then-rising star Xavi that Iniesta would someday surpass them both. Guardiola’s words turned out to be prescient indeed.

It actually took Iniesta a while to become a regular in Barça’s starting line-up. Despite debuting for the Catalan powerhouse in the 2002-03 season when he was just 18, it wasn’t until the 2006-07 campaign - his fifth season at the club - when he would establish himself as a fixture within the starting 11. This also meant that Iniesta was on the bench as the Blaugrana beat Arsenal in the 2005-06 Champions League final; however, the absolute peak of his career - one at a level which very few footballers in history have ever reached - was just on the horizon.

Iniesta played a vital role in Spain’s 2008 European Championship victory - La Furia Roja’s first continental title in 44 years. Almost a year later, Iniesta scored the equalizing goal in stoppage time of the second leg of Barça’s controversial Champions League semifinal against Chelsea. While to this day, the circumstances of Barça’s victory continue to rankle with many due to the highly questionable officiating throughout the match, it can’t be denied that Iniesta did indeed step up and deliver when his team needed him most. Barça would go on to beat Manchester United in the final to clinch their and Iniesta’s second Champions League in four seasons.

The next year saw Iniesta’s ascension to the level of undeniable all-time great. Against the Netherlands in the 2010 World Cup final, Iniesta scored the only goal of the match deep into extra time to bring the World Cup title to Spain for the first and so far only time. To this day, it’s also a commonly held viewpoint that Iniesta ought to have won the Ballon d’Or in 2010 over his Barça teammate Lionel Messi.

Two more Champions League titles followed in 2011 and 2015 as well as a back-to-back European Championship title with Spain in 2012. By the time Iniesta concluded his 16-year stint at Barça in 2018 when he left for J1 League club Vissel Kobe, he was regarded as Spain’s greatest footballer of all time and arguably the best player to have never won the Ballon d’Or.

There’s absolutely no question that Barça’s and Spain’s dynasties don’t happen without Iniesta. While Messi was filling up the nets and collecting bucketloads of individual honours and Xavi was lauded as the embodiment of Guardiola’s tiki-taka strategy itself, Iniesta served as the conduit between the two other pillars of Barça’s glory days. He was the pinnacle of the archetypal “midfield maestro” - on so many occasions he’d be the one behind it all, the one tying it all together and making it work, whether for club or country.

Such was the regard that Iniesta is held in that even Barça’s arch-rivals Real Madrid took to social media to release a statement honoring Iniesta’s legendary career. This was an almost unfathomable move; only a true legend like Iniesta could’ve prompted anything like that.

Andrés Iniesta has had an almost incomparable career. While he’s Spain’s most decorated footballer with 35 titles, even that massive number on its own seems almost dismissive of the true magnitude of his achievements. There’s a very strong case to be made that Iniesta is one of the 10 greatest players of all time as well as the best central midfielder to ever do it. Surely, the statue in front of Camp Nou will be coming any day now.

The Weekly Take, Issue 330: Not the Start They Were Expecting

Having lost their opening Champions League match by a 3-1 scoreline against Liverpool, AC Milan faced an even more difficult task in their second match of the league phase: an away match against reigning Bundesliga champions Bayer Leverkusen. Despite the expansion of the league phase to an eight-matchday Swiss bracket, it would nevertheless be very difficult for Milan to advance to the round of 16 if they were to open their campaign with two straight losses.

That, however, is exactly what happened. The Rossoneri succumbed to a 1-0 defeat following Victor Boniface’s goal in the 51st minute. Earlier in the match, Boniface actually did put the ball in the net; however, a VAR review showed that Leverkusen wing-back Jeremie Frimpong had been offside before sending in the cross which Nigerian striker Boniface had ostensibly finished off.

With seven minutes remaining in regulation time, French left-back Théo Hernandez came close to scoring Milan’s equalizer but saw his deflected shot from outside the penalty area strike the goalpost. That was as good as it got for Milan; they now face an arduous road to the last 16.

This past off-season, Milan embarked on a large-scale overhaul of their squad. They spent a total of €74 million on six players, brought in three more on loan deals, and added another on a free transfer. On the flipside, a laundry list of players departed the red half of the San Siro - though apart from veteran centre-forward Olivier Giroud, none of the players who left were regular starters. In addition, after almost five full seasons as Milan’s head coach, Stefano Pioli left for Saudi Arabia and was replaced by Paulo Fonseca.

In the 2022-23 season, Milan made it to the Champions League semifinals for the first time since winning it all back in the 2006-07 season. Despite losing to city rivals Inter to miss out on a spot in the final, Milan seemed to have something they could build off. Having won Serie A the season before and thus reclaiming the league title for the first time in 11 years, Milan seemed to be moving in the right direction.

However, last season was instead a step backwards. Inter cruised to a runaway league title victory, leaving Milan in their dust; though Milan finished second in the league, they were a whopping 19 points behind Inter. On the continental front, Milan couldn’t make it out of the Champions League group stage with Paris Saint-Germain beating them to the second qualifying spot from Group F on head-to-head goal difference. Milan would go on to drop into the Europa League where they would lose to Roma in the quarterfinals - the same Roma team which finished 12 points behind Milan in the league.

Milan got off to a slow start in this season’s Serie A, failing to win any of their first three matches. Shortly after that was their Champions League opener which they lost to Liverpool. Although it seemed as though last season’s Serie A runners-up had turned the corner following a Derby della Madonnina victory against Inter Milan, this latest result evidently proves that Milan are unlikely to have what it takes to make a deep run in this season’s Champions League.

Even at this early stage of his tenure in the Milan dugout, Fonseca is already under serious pressure; it wouldn’t be all that surprising if he were to be fired before the end of the season. Although the derby victory did buy the Portuguese coach a little more time, Fonseca has thus far struggled to understand what’s working and what isn’t with this Milan team.

Milan’s new signings haven’t made the impact the club would’ve hoped for. This could very well be a case of “too many changes all at once” - they haven’t really had much time to gel, and this could have affected their performance up to now. Though there’s every chance this could change as the season progresses, none of Milan’s signings were any which most might have expected to move the needle in any significant way.

Though it’s still early in the season, AC Milan already do look rather shaky. Domestically, a resurgent Napoli and Juventus have already gotten the jump on them. In the Champions League, they already have plenty of ground to make up. There’s still time to turn it around - but things don’t look promising at all.