Walter Mazzarri replaces Rudi Garcia as Napoli head coach

Napoli, one of the main discoveries of the last European football season, responded to the failures in the current season by firing coach Rudi Garcia. Instead, Walter Mazzarri will be the club’s coach. He had already worked very productively with the Neapolitans from 2009 to 2013, but did not achieve any success with other teams.

“Napoli” announced, that the head coach of the club, Frenchman Rudi Garcia, has been dismissed. The vacant post went to the Italian Walter Mazzarri. He signed a contract until the end of the season.

The dismissal of Garcia, despite the fact that he appeared in Napoli quite recently – in the summer, it was an expected event.

Before his arrival, this team had a fantastically successful season under the leadership of Luciano Spalletti, winning gold in the previous national championship by a huge margin and reaching the quarterfinals of the Champions League. But Spalletti accepted the offer to lead the Italian national team, and he was replaced at the club by the experienced Garcia.

However, today’s Napoli, despite the fact that it has retained most of the key characters, without parting with either Victor Osimhen or Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, is completely different from the Napoli that has turned into one of the brightest football discoveries of recent years.

He performs rather mediocre in the championship, and after defeats last weekend from the outsider Empoli, already the third home team in the championship, takes fourth place in it, already ten points behind the leading Inter.

The appointment of Walter Mazzarri is just a surprise. 62-year-old Mazzarri is a specialist with a rich coaching biography, but it is very specific. In fact, there is one truly successful segment in it. And this is exactly the period of work with Napoli. Mazzarri led it from 2009 to 2013.

Before this, the Neapolitan team was considered more of a middle peasant in Italian football than one of the leaders. With Mazzarri, she managed to win national championship medals twice (bronze in 2011, silver in 2013), reach the playoffs of the Champions League, and also win the Italian Cup in 2012, defeating Juventus, which was then invulnerable on the domestic front. ” Despite the fact that the club did not have any valuable trophies or even any significant achievements for two decades.

Under Walter Mazzarri, Napoli played in a style similar to that introduced by Luciano Spalletti – with a clear emphasis on attack, with a front three.

The problem is that, having raised his personal quotes thanks to the Neapolitans, Mazzarri did not make any further breakthroughs. On the contrary, the continuation of his career turned out to be surprisingly modest. After leaving Napoli in 2013, he worked for Inter, Watford, Torino and Cagliari. He was unable to stay at any of these clubs for long: each time, Mazzarri was soon fired after a series of misfires.

Alexey Dospehov