u/CarloneBombolone

We we! I want to have fun - yes, this is how I have fun - by ranking a series of at least theoretically possible managers (to be clear: I won't bother talking about Klopp, Xabi Alonso or Guardiola, that would be a waste of time for me) into tiers. And that's basically it.

Fair warning: this is a long read, and a TL;DR isn't really possible. If you don't feel like it, skip it, reddit is full of other posts and mine are just tactical rambling.

TIER S: WET DREAMS

This is about people who, yes, theoretically might still be possible, but are absolutely unlikely, either because they're probably already headed elsewhere, or because they're not the kind of profile Napoli typically targets.

ENZO MARESCA

A genuinely talented manager in my view, one of those Guardiola "disciples" leading the renewal of the positional play codified by the Catalan. If we consider Kompany, Arteta and Maresca the main figures among the new Guardiolists, the former Chelsea man sits in the middle between Kompany's revolutionary and bold approach and Arteta's "haram-ball": he's still attached to the 3-2-5/3-2-2-3, which at Chelsea he interpreted by giving complete freedom of movement to an attacking midfielder (Palmer, usually), with the rest of the midfield's "quadrilateral" adapting around him. He wants a very vertical buildup, with the two wide players always at maximum width and supporting movements to create numerical superiority on one side. His Chelsea also had the ability to vary pressing height, with moments of intense man-to-man pressure and moments of mid or low block. Chelsea's defence was far from impenetrable, but an attacking game combined with very vertical play leaves the team structurally unbalanced, and the style seemed worth the trade-off for the Blues, given the collapse they suffered under the new manager (even if there the new coach's personal responsibility is clearly a factor).

Fit with the squad: Conte set his players up in a 3-2-5 exactly as Maresca does, and just like Chelsea, Napoli had major problems managing transitions when the team stretched. Actually worse than Chelsea, given the characteristics of the Neapolitan defensive line. It's likely that in adapting to the squad, some of the sparkle that defined Chelsea would be sacrificed in favour of compactness. Gilmour could get a big boost from Maresca's interpretation of positional play (with Lobotka potentially losing ground), and the Salerno-born coach seems to love fullbacks who play as midfielders, like Di Lorenzo and Gutierrez. From the striker he demands lots of runs in behind, which means Hojlund could be properly utilised rather than forced to cosplay as Lukaku, and his background on Man City's staff leads me to think he would without doubt be able to get the best out of De Bruyne, perhaps placing him in his favoured right half-space, and leaving his attacking midfield partner free to roam.

ROGER SCHMIDT

One of the pioneers of gegenpressing, in Germany he earned a reputation as an uncompromising hard-liner, with a wildly vertical, almost brutal style of play. He was the first I ever saw use the tactic - now used by PSG - of deliberately giving up possession to press the opponent high up the pitch. His experiences across the Netherlands, China and Portugal broadened his repertoire and fundamentally changed his approach, his Benfica was a team that seemed to dance with the ball, with fluid, flowing play built on freedom of movement and the combination of many technical players in very tight spaces, probably the most aesthetically satisfying take on relational football I have ever seen. All of it underpinned by his legendary suffocating press. That Benfica was also successful, and his sacking was a serious mistake in my view, given that none of his successors did better than he had at the moment he was let go.

Fit with the squad: Spalletti comes to mind. The 2022-23 Napoli played fluid, free-flowing relational football to great effect, and yes, years have passed and some key players have changed, but many of the crucial figures for that style of play, the Lobotkas, Anguissas, Di Lorenzos, are still here. Gutierrez shares more than a few similarities in his game with Mario Rui (and also with Schmidt's left back at Benfica: Alex Grimaldo), not to mention that Schmidt would be reuniting with David Neres, whose career he revived. I consider Schmidt, like Maresca, an immediate fit.

SIMONE INZAGHI

For me, he is by far the most promising and original Italian manager among those who still have relatively limited experience. The architect of a truly fluid game, like really hella fluid, where defenders act like attackers and midfielders act like defenders, at times lucid enough to abandon that fluidity during periods of fatigue, shifting to more static possession phases. He has the ability to adapt to his squad, even varying his approach drastically, just consider that his Lazio was one of the most vertical teams in Serie A, with fast-play solutions specifically tailored to his best players' characteristics, and his Inter one of the slowest and most cerebral. The only fixed principles in his football are fluidity and total adaptation to the available squad (he's seen as a 3-5-2 fundamentalist, but at Lazio he started with a 4-3-3 and at Al-Hilal he tried endless different systems), along with the ambition to control matches and play as proactive a brand of football as possible. It's true, very much true, that his Inter won less than they deserved (thankfully for us), but under Inzaghi they were a great Champions League side, competing on equal terms with Arsenal, City, Bayern and Barcelona, and I'm not sure Chivu will ever manage to achieve that, even having largely preserved the style of play of Inzaghi's Inter.

Fit with the squad: the discussion here is complicated, because Inzaghi's teams look nothing like one another, and rather than evaluating his style against our squad, it would be more useful to assess whether his ability to adapt can be trusted, in three questions:

• Is his fluid football suited to our players? I'd say absolutely yes, the reasoning mirrors that for Schmidt.

• With a squad prone to significant morale and concentration drops, is he the right person to keep everyone focused? This is where I have the biggest doubts. On a human level, he doesn't seem to possess great leadership qualities, at least from what filters through publicly.

• Is he the right manager to make us take the next step in the Champions League? Without question, his cup record speaks for itself.

TIER A: THE BEST VIABLE OPTIONS?

This is about people more likely to end up at Napoli, either for economic feasibility or simply because it's a profile closer to those Napoli actually targets, and who in my view would be a strong fit for the squad.

VINCENZO ITALIANO

I notice a lot of people on this sub shudder at the mere mention of this name. I, on the other hand, would consider him one of the best possible fits, despite some of his tendencies scaring me and others leaving me unconvinced, and here I'll explain my reasoning. Among the entire school of Italian coaches loosely described as "Gasperinean", the ones who break the game down into a succession of individual duels and flood the flanks to build play, Italiano has in my view shown himself to be the most ambitious. Even though at Bologna he began to ease off the ultra-high press, the high-intensity press with a very high defensive line is unquestionably his trademark (even his coaching licence thesis was about pressing), and in my view he had to lower it a notch at Bologna because that squad lacked the quality in midfield and defence to sustain possession at the level his Fiorentina could. The problem with his teams, in my view, isn't so much his choice of when and how to press, but rather the difficulty in switching from man-marking in the high press to a more zonal approach in the lower defensive block. His teams tend to retain the man-marking mentality a bit too much because they always want to press, leading to mistakes. A truly monumental defensive organiser like Amir Rrahmani (one of the best centre backs in the world, I will forever shout this at anyone who will listen) could solve some of these problems through sheer reading of the game. Italiano shares with Conte a tendency to play through the flanks, pack the box with bodies and whip in crosses, but this type of attacking play is more effective under Italiano, for a simple numerical reason: Conte prioritises balance, Italiano pushes the defensive line extremely high, masses people in advanced areas and tries to stay there, smothering opposition counterattacks through high pressure. Since he pushes a lot of men forward during the build-up phase to break the opposition press in half and open space in the midfield, there is plenty to fear when the ball is lost in build-up play.

Fit with the squad: it exists and is undeniable. Napoli has the physicality to sustain his press and to make the cross-heavy game typical of Italiano's sides dangerous, the capacity for interchange and free movement needed to make his wide play work, the quality in possession to afford to press so high without falling apart. Italiano has a similar intensity to Conte in terms of how much his players believe in what they're doing, his leadership qualities are not in question in the slightest. Some say Italiano is a loser, I say he's the only one in recent times capable of taking Fiorentina to European finals and bringing trophies to Bologna, and that to find out whether he's a winner you'd first have to give him a squad built to win.

FRANCESCO FARIOLI

I'll say it upfront: I'm not a fan. He's a very remarkable coach eh, my only issue with him is purely from an entertainment standpoint. Let's say that, if the Champions League final represented the two main directions positional play has taken in its post-peak evolution away from man-marking, Farioli is one of those managers we can align with Mikel Arteta's footballing philosophy, and therefore a very controlled style, built on defensive solidity, risk containment, set pieces. Farioli has, compared to Arteta, a more mnemonics-driven, Italian-school approach, and this does make his football slightly faster and therefore at least marginally more enjoyable from my perspective. That said, it's undeniable that Farioli is a genuine talent. Even more than the title with Porto, what I look at is the collapse his teams suffered after he left: Nice and Ajax are in PIECES, it was him making them competitive. His 4-3-3 at Porto doesn't allow much freedom of movement (though at Ajax, for example, there was noticeably less rigidity) and he's one of the few managers whose setup actually looks like a genuine 4-3-3. What others achieve through unpredictability, Farioli achieves through the speed of execution of rehearsed moves. Exactly, in this he is reminiscent of Conte. He too can press at multiple heights, goes man-for-man against the opposition build-up like almost everyone, but it's his lower defensive block, zonal, that impresses me, because all his teams are genuinely very solid in that phase.

Fit with the squad: Napoli is coming off a cycle played on broadly similar principles, to which much of the squad adapts well (I see only Lobotka as a fish out of water in a memory-based system), Farioli uses a 5-4-1 in the defensive phase like Conte, modulates pressing depending on the moment like Conte, loves the direct ball to the striker like... well, you get the picture, and while his possession phase has meaningful differences, starting from the structure used, it's similar enough not to create traumatic transitions. It would genuinely be a superb choice, but he renewed his contract in January and I don't see it as especially likely.

TIER B: VIABLE, BUT I HAVE DOUBTS

Here I'm talking about people I'd still be happy to see at Napoli, because I consider them competent, fitting and realistic, but about whom I have some reservations, which I'll explain.

THIAGO MOTTA

Continuing with the Gasperini-inspired coaches who managed Bologna (and Spezia! Their careers are almost identical). Motta's Juventus was unwatchable, I think we can all agree on that, but he still got there, he managed Juventus, and as Ancelotti shows, failing once at Juve doesn't mean failing forever. Motta shares a few tactical ideas with Italiano (pushing a centre-back forward when needed, dropping the central striker deep, man-pressing obviously), but the underlying philosophy is completely different: Motta is obsessed with balance. His fifth-place Bologna was a defensive excellence above all else, and his Juventus too, despite some issues, had spells of absolute impenetrability. This solidity isn't achieved only through out-of-possession attitude, which at the level of principles is the usual one that involves high man-to-man pressure and a lower, more zonal block in a 4-4-2 or 4-5-1, but also through a careful possession phase that constantly thinks about the preventive transition, incorporating elements of both positional play and fluidity. He has a clear preference for disciplined players, and this could be a problem for those sidelined by Conte, who would return only to find a manager with a similarly uncompromising approach. The lack of solutions in possession at his Juventus worries me.

Fit with the squad: the team is physically strong, highly disciplined and capable of positional interchange, carrying both the Spallettian fluidity and the Contian positional rigidity in its DNA, making it very well equipped to interpret his ideas. The absence of a striker capable of linking play with quality could generate the same creative sterility that afflicted Juventus with Vlahovic up front, but then again, we've grown accustomed to that over the past couple of years.

MAURIZIO SARRI

The historic ex. I don't know how young some of the Napoli fans are on this sub, but if you haven't seen that Napoli side, go and watch it: a spectacle. His possession football has remained broadly the same across different formations. It's built on a rigid pass-and-move principle, in which collective movements are conceived in pairs or triplets (so no positional structure and no relationism) and the ball always moves vertically, the centre is sought far more often than the Serie A average and technique is always encouraged, rewarded and developed. The Lazio squad is unfortunately truly desolate in that regard, and this forces the manager to play defensively and on the counter, but this also tells us there is a certain capacity to adapt to the context, while keeping his principles intact. In the defensive phase, his rigid zone is the source of my doubts. Lazio don't have a bad defensive phase in terms of what they concede (seventh in Serie A for fewest xG allowed), but I'm concerned that the press is no longer effective. Lazio sometimes apply pressure and don't always sit deep (from memory, in terms of number of pressures applied they're at Roma's level, yet the quality and intensity of the press is among the worst in Serie A), but they NEVER abandon total zone defending, and by now possession phases are perfectly and mnemonically capable, through simple "third man" combinations, of always finding a teammate behind the lines of pressure. At this point, if you want an effective press, pressing in numerical parity and engaging the opposition build-up man-for-man is non-negotiable, and if you don't do it from the start of the action because you want to maintain compactness, you study "triggers" at the activation of which you press man-for-man (for example the lateral pass from centre-back to fullback, a classic).

Fit with the squad: I have little doubt the squad would adapt well to his demands. There's Rrahmani, who would be the perfect leader of a Sarrian defence, there are many players adept at moving off the ball vertically and playing one-touch, there are no players with the geometric quality of Hamsik and Jorginho, but the physical impact and ability to recycle possession should compensate. Perhaps, for the fit to be complete, a central midfielder with better running and off-the-ball movement than those currently available would be needed.

RAFFAELE PALLADINO

This would be the most romantic option, the manager from Mugnano, a Napoli supporter. He's the most Gasperinean of all the Gasperini disciples, even more so than Juric in my view. Unlike his mentor, however, Palladino always wants a considered possession phase, with more systematic use of build-up from the back and repetitive, coordinated movements. While Gasperini allows more freedom along the attacking chains, Palladino wants the classic "diamond" that forms on the flank (the wide centre-back, the defensive midfielder, the wing-back and the offensive midfielder) in his 3-4-3, to be disciplined, which means every forward run must be compensated by cover, and specific situations generate repetitive responses. His possession phase involves total man-marking, the pressing-trigger system is lifted directly from Gasperini's playbook, but it's precisely the defensive phase where my doubts lie: I believe total man-marking across the whole pitch is only sustainable if backed by the right aggression. If you're marking man-for-man but passively, the result is being dragged all over the pitch, always one step behind: and I get the sense that Palladino's teams get led around without being able to react. This is less visible when he chooses to defend deeper, but given the proximity to goal it seems even more dangerous. His Fiorentina, which generally defended quite deep, was arguably more solid overall than Atalanta, but had some truly disheartening spells of disconnection and passivity.

Fit with the squad: Palladino's possession play is simple and adaptable to Napoli, who already line up in a 3-4-2-1 and already adopt man-marking in the high press. Napoli have some older players in advanced positions, and this approach could force them to defend in their own half if they encounter "braccetti" with some license to push forward (Pavlovic, Bisseck, Atalanta's and Roma's ones ecc.), and yes, De Bruyne has shown the willingness to put himself about defensively and track back, but Lukaku, for example, hasn't really pressed or defended actively for years. Furthermore, while the rigid man-marking approach could bring out the best in Buongiorno, I believe it would hide Rrahmani's qualities, and I don't think it would be worth putting our best defender in a difficult position. Of all the managers listed, as of now I think Palladino would be the least suited to the current squad.

A COUPLE OF HONOURABLE MENTIONS

Managers who would theoretically be possible and whom I like a lot (though not as much as those in Tier S), but who Napoli won't give a second glance:

• Adi Hütter

• Oliver Glasner

• Edin Terzic

• Filipe Luís

• Marcelo Gallardo

• Ernesto Valverde

• Andoni Iraola

And then I'd like to close by talking about him. Yes, him, your nightmare: Max.

I believe Max is a great manager. I still believe that, despite the years of decline, and I also believe it's quite likely that Napoli would perform well under him (in terms of results). But I couldn't bear having Allegri after Conte, sometimes it already almost feels like I'm supporting Juventus in certain games, even more so if we repeat the Conte --> Allegri route. And I don't want to. Also, in these 2020's there have already been enough ugly remakes, we don't need to make another.

I'm sure there's some people I didn't think about, but this is a long ass post already and I seriously doubt anyone will read it.