The Scudetto is the last piece of the Naples Renaissance

Wherever you turn, everywhere you see Naples. And then comes the scudetto in football, awaited since the years of the Lord: that’s all now, that’s all. The Naples Renaissance moves the barycentre of the city to the south coolness compared to post-Expo Milan: those who hadn’t arrived there from the other tributaries, now – and for a few months – will not be able to avoid the flood of television services, street parties, references in the news, postage stamps with cancellations, international apologies for the phenomena hired by the producer Aurelio De Laurentiis, who finally have conquered the third championship after a first match point that went empty. “If it’s not one day, it’s the next”, they said in the Gulf, like a newborn after nine months of gestation: about the same as in a Serie A football championship, since when Kvicha Kvaratskhelia – perhaps the most amazing of athletes Azzurri d’Italia – scored the first two fabulous goals at the Bentegodi stadium in Verona. If then the walls of the cemeteries were decorated with graffiti of the tenor “that you have lost”, to redeem entire precarious periods, now there is a whole world around that seethes in the ball: and what stands out, often, is only the surface to be scratching compared to the less conspicuous and mass submerged.

For a “Mare fuori” that became public domain in the memes and chatter of the next day, the usual Mario Martone not later than a year ago outlined “Nostalgia” from the novel by Ermanno Rea, and Paolo Mossetti also drew the essay “Appugrundrisse” since his return to the city. Thus, the video of Sofia Goggia trying to speak Neapolitan and Bob Sinclar mixing traces wearing Diego Armando Maradona’s shirt are the shield behind which to discover the mystery of Liberato, the Mediterranean waves of Nu Genea and Napoleone from Capaccio Paestum, the “Napoli Segreta” compilations and the true story of the most famous forgers of the eighties in “Mixed by Erry”: the funk repechages of the first period of Pino Daniele and his extraordinary band are there to say that the neomelodic is not a sealed destiny , and that with certainty there is an underground Naples still to be explored in all fields. If Benedetto Croce, Eduardo de Filippo, Luciano de Crescenzo have been examples of excellence that for a long time have not known, or been able to, reverberate in the daily virtues of a large part of their readers and spectators, in 2023 the Città della Scienza in Bagnoli sees the future after the fire, and the piles of garbage on the streets are just a memory.

A city firmly guided by the centre-left, with the mayor-rector-minister Gaetano Manfredi, has not seen Masaniello Luigi de Magistris take root politically, also re-elected with Bulgarian figures; now forgotten are the glories of the Bassolino councils and the mythography of Piazza Plebiscito, in the face of Alessandra Mussolini when she addressed him (on TV by Gad Lerner) with “you made the lira collapse!”. Something like this also happened in football: Maurizio Sarri’s beautiful Napoli, Gonzalo Higuaín’s goal record, the quick exchanges between the little guys Lorenzo Insigne and Dries “Ciro” Mertens have almost passed into oblivion. It was a team that could have won but didn’t win, even though they deserved it; on the other hand, this show forged by the lucid head of the Tuscan Spalletti is doing it, the apogee of the game against Liverpool in the Champions League and rare setbacks. Only the backup midfielder Gianluca Gaetano was born in Naples, and the third goalkeeper Davide Marfella comes from Pozzuoli: trifles, considering – as the late Claudio Garella said – that all those who descend into the Gulf from the north are a bit Neapolitan they always become. And they queue up at Gino Sorbillo’s franchises or at Michele’s pizzeria off Corso Umberto for just the two specialities, margherita and marinara: but then they try the rraù, stuff themselves with panuozzi and it’s time to svaccare on the sofa.

Remote control on, between brilliant friends and lying lives of adults, the flourishing Rai production center in Campania depopulates thanks to the boom of “Un posto al sole”, twenty-five years and not hearing them, a webcam aimed at the Vulcano café and Palazzo Palladini where it never sets never the sun. New spectators of all classes and ages join the pioneers, who may struggle to remember each intricate passage but are ready to support petitions up to Parliament to avoid any hypothesis of time change, from what was once prime time , while one day he dies and another is not yet born. Go Naples, it’s your moment: the sellers of everything rub their hands ‘ngopp’ perched on the stencils of the Spanish Quarters, the Maradona “borgo” that reaps more profane visits than the sacred seven Works of Mercy by Caravaggio: the Champions League faded League, art and tourism were waiting for nothing but the third championship. Finally, all superstition is banned: for the next blue nativity scene in San Gregorio Armeno, it is advisable to book already in spring.