In the round of 50 of the Champions League, after having eliminated a team of the caliber of Manchester City. For those who consider themselves Napoli fans since the mid-1986s, it's more than a feat! It's a gift! Certainly the Napoli of Maradona and Careca won two championships. In 87-1989 and 90-1989. Then there was the conquest of the UEFA Cup in 2004. But for the fans it hasn't always been rosy. Napoli have never lacked relegations to Serie B, and then the drama of XNUMX, with the loss of the sporting title and starting over from C. Yet the fans continued to go to the stadium: in times of fat cows, but also in times of lean cows. And therefore it is worthwhile to fully enjoy the gift that Lavezzi and Cavani have given us.
I haven't been to the stadium for a long time. But I went and how much! At San Paolo, but also at the old Vomero stadium. I must have been just under ten the first time I attended a Napoli match accompanied by my father. “Bugatti, Comaschi, Viney; Castelli, Gramaglia, Granata; Vitali, Formentin, Jeppson, Amadei Pesaola. Allocator Eraldo Monzeglio”. The Vomero stadium held no more than 35 thousand spectators, one of the bends rested on steel pipes. We played with the "system", there was still free. And the goalposts were rectangular. No substitutions were allowed during the match. If the goalkeeper was hurt, an "attacker" had to go between the posts. At Vomero then there wasn't even a radio cabin. And when he was there, Niccolo Carosio had to do the radio commentary from the sidelines.
My first match was Napoli-Atalanta. Napoli, in red shirt (it was supposed to be the host team to put on the reserve shirt and Atalanta was in black and blue) won 6 to 3. Tennis result. But it wasn't always going to be like this. My career as a fan has passed more through disappointments than satisfactions: the relegations to Serie B, the missed championships from the times of Sivori and Altafini. As for Maradona's Napoli, I followed him less, and above all from a distance. I no longer lived in Naples and I had to limit myself to following him, when I could, from the voice of Enrico Ameri and the other radio commentators. And, in cases of greater difficulty, by asking a passerby the fateful question: "Excuse me, do you know what Napoli did"?
If I have to say who the Napoli players I loved the most were, I have to mention two names. The first is Jeppson, called by the fans "O banco e Napule" (he was the first player to cost more than one hundred million lire). He came from Sweden, he was a classic can-attack, who scored goals, leaving the opposing midfielder in place. Jeppson was also a true sportsman. Suffice it to recall that, despite being a professional footballer, he was a good second category tennis player, for many years a Campania champion. The second name is that of another centre-forward: Vinicio who was also the coach of Napoli for a certain period.
I would then like to try to dispel an easy cliché: The one for which the Napoli fan would be one of the least socially recommendable among Italian fans and beyond. It is not so. Of course, I don't deny that sometimes the faces you meet on the steps of Italian stadiums, following the Azzurri, sometimes make a certain impression, and that above all, since the camorra has taken shape in the area, it is difficult to exclude the influence of the underworld on the fans. but the Napoli fan is above all a somewhat melancholy character, sometimes resigned, and above all used to suffering from so many disappointments and ready to suffer again in the name of his passion. In the years in which I was a subscriber to the "distinti" I remember a gentleman who sat more or less behind me: before the game began, he arranged the pillow and then announced: "Today, I'm going to get sick !” (today I have to get sick and 'core).
And it's all those fans, neither violent, nor immoral, nor folkloric at all costs, but only suffering from their passion, that I thought of yesterday after Napoli had accomplished the feat. Just as I thought of my father, also a Napoli fan, who when he took me to the stadium, had had to (just once) interrupt the decision he had made (due to political ringworm) not to go to see Napoli again until the captain Lauro would be its president. And who, the day Italy won the World Cup in Spain by beating Germany in 1982, commented: "With those of '34 and '38 I saw Italy win three World Cups, but I fear I will never see the Napoli win the championship”. He was a good prophet, because he died shortly after and in any case before Maradona and his companions won the two championships.
