Five reasons to be a Napoli fan
1) The underdog. A recent article on the Harvard Business Review defines the underdog “as a person or group in a competition, usually in sports and creative works, who is popularly expected to lose”. Harry Potter, Barack Obama (in 2008), the 1980 US Men’s Olympic ice hockey team (against the Soviet team), or Vinci (against S. Williams in the 2015 US Open) are all great examples of people or teams that went on to win against all odds. Napoli started this season with roughly the same team that finished 5th last year in the Italian Serie A. A team that had left many supporters disappointed with some poor and unpredictable performances at the end of the 2015 season. In addition, the club had not signed big players in the summer and had gone through a change in managing staff, the almost unknown Maurizio Sarri for the famous Rafa Benitez (going to Madrid). It is fair to say that Napoli was set up for a soccer season away from the limelight with the hopes of probably finishing behind the powerhouses: Juventus, the two Milan’s and Roma. As a true underdog, however, Napoli has this year risen to the top positions and is fighting Juventus to the title.
2) The great beauty. For many movies aficionados, the “great beauty” might be Rome, but I ask you: put a compass to a map and trace a circle; then tell me which other city in the world has such a concentration of places around like Amalfi, Ischia, Procida, Sorrento, Positano, Pompei, and Capri. Just the same, if you catch a Napoli game on tv, you will find yourself watching a beautiful soccer game unlike many others.
3) The language. For geopolitical and historical reasons Italy still preserves a rich wealth of local languages (often referred to as dialects). The so-called (wrongly I might add) “Neapolitan dialect” is the local Italian language with the richest and probably oldest history. As the main spoken language of the previous generations around Napoli, the Neapolitan language has influenced many art forms delivering poems, movies, plays, songs (e.g. ‘O sole mio) that have permeated Italian culture. As Anna Trieste (a famous Italian/Neapolitan journalist) exquisitely does, the job of this generation is to conserve such wealth of history, tradition and vocabulary in a witty, ironic but grateful way. A fascinating consequence is that Napoli soccer players from all over the world will develop an ear and learn some of the language, so that supporters eventually get to experience a mix of fascinating sounds: Neapolitan with French, Spanish, Slovak etc.
4) The food. When you decide to go and watch a game at the San Paolo stadium in Napoli, you will find scores of food trucks, restaurants and kiosks selling some of the tastiest delicacies you have probably ever tried. Pizze, calzoni, pizze fritte, panini, baba’, sfogliatelle are just a few, look them up and I assure you your taste buds will respond to even just a pixelated picture; and remember, foodtruck in Napoli is gourmet….
5) The people. Warm, passionate, loyal, sometimes old fashioned, indomitable and reliably unpredictable. Those of you that know someone from Napoli would know. For the others, there is only one way to find out…
(foto Flaviana Frascogna)