Napoli remain top but will Kvaratskhelia cast shadow over Serie A bid? | Nicky Bandini

Antonio Conte is not angry, just disappointed, but before you accuse him of the oldest trick in the parenting book give the man time to finish his thought. On Saturday he confirmed Khvicha Kvaratskhelia wants to leave Napoli, expressing frustration that six months of working together had not persuaded the Georgia international that they could achieve great things together.

A day later, though, he provided a subtle reframing. “I want to underline something,” said Conte at his press conference following a 2-0 win over Verona. “When I spoke about disappointment, I was not speaking about disappointment felt toward a player or toward the club but in myself. I thought I could cut through and influence this situation … maybe I was a little bit presumptuous.”

After winning league titles with three clubs across two countries, Conte can feel entitled to his self-belief. He has reminded us again this season at Napoli of his extraordinary capacity to bend a situation to his will, lifting a team that finished 10th last season back to the top of the Serie A table. Sunday’s victory was another little landmark to remind us of how quickly he has turned this club around. Napoli began this season with a 3-0 loss away to Verona, an inauspicious start even before we remember Kvaratskhelia left that game with an injury before half-time.

The winger’s presence had helped lure Conte to Napoli in the first place – a guarantee of continuity even as the other star of the 2022-23 title-winning side, Victor Osimhen, was expected to depart. “I’ve heard some confusion on this subject, but there is none,” said Conte upon taking his position in June. “Kvaratskhelia is staying. I have been categorical on this point.”

Despite failing to find a buyer for Osimhen – eventually sent on loan to Galatasaray – Napoli pressed ahead with their own spending plans, adding Alessandro Buongiorno, Scott McTominay, Romelu Lukaku, David Neres, Billy Gilmour and Rafa Marín. Their combined fees added up to almost €150m. Still, Kvaratskhelia was key to all of it. “He has characteristics that just aren’t common,” said Conte. “He’s strong, he has that bit of fantasy, he creates goal-scoring opportunities and assists. We want to draw out the best of what makes him special.”

The player was making the right noises too, describing Conte as “one of the best in the world” and a coach who could aid his personal development. In the background, though, were contradicting remarks from his agent Mamuka Jugeli, who told Sport Imedi in June that Kvaratskhelia wanted to leave and to compete in the Champions League.

With the player’s contract running through to 2027, and still set at the same modest rate he agreed when joining from Dinamo Batumi – his reported €1.8m annual net salary is less than a third the figure paid to Lukaku – the expectation was that he would follow Osimhen’s path of agreeing a new deal on improved terms with clauses to guarantee mutually convenient sale at a later date. Perhaps the Nigerian’s failure to find a club this summer dissuaded Kvaratskhelia. Or maybe Conte’s ideas have not truly resonated in the way the manager imagined.

Antonio Conte’s Napoli have evolved through the season, abandoning a back three. Photograph: Agostino Gemito/IPA Sport/ipa-agency.net/Shutterstock

On the surface this has been another solid season for Kvaratskhelia, who has five goals and three assists in 15 Serie A starts. Yet there are peculiarities. He is beating his man far less regularly than in previous seasons, WhoScored’s numbers showing just 1.1 successful dribbles per game, compared to three last term. It is not for lack of trying. Fotmob puts his success rate at just 31.1% this season, down from above 50 last term.

Part of the explanation may be tactical. Conte’s Napoli have evolved through the season, abandoning a back three and progressing through what he characterised as a 4-2-2-2 to something more like a 4-3-3. But there has sometimes been an emphasis on playing down the right, a tendency that can leave Kvaratskhelia isolated on the left. Another theory has been that Conte’s more physically demanding playing style and insistence on tracking back is sapping explosiveness at the other end.

Whatever the reason, there has been a growing sense for Napoli that Kvaratskhelia might not be as indispensable as he once was. Neres had only started five games before this weekend, but already had collected two goals and four assists, several of those while filling in on the left. Saturday’s game was the fifth time Kvaratskhelia has been missing from the starting XI this season, and the third time he has been absent for the full 90 minutes. Napoli have won on every occasion.

Neres was a menace, constantly on the ball and taking up threatening positions in the first half, especially. He deserved an assist for the feint that floored Ondrej Duda in the Verona box after half an hour, but McTominay fired over from his pass. No matter. Napoli had already taken the lead in the fifth minute, when captain Giovanni Di Lorenzo executed a brilliant one-two with Lukaku on the edge of the area before swinging a shot against the post, from where it rebounded on to the back of goalkeeper Lorenzo Montipò and into the net.

Scott McTominay in acrobatic action against Verona. Photograph: Alessandro Garofalo/LaPresse/Shutterstock

It took them until the hour mark to get their second goal. Lukaku was the pivot again, this time for André-Frank Zambo Anguissa, who crashed his shot in at Montipò’s near post. Even before that, though, Napoli had never looked in danger of letting things slip.

As a one-off result, the win was nothing remarkable. Verona are 17th, having conceded 44 goals in 20 games. Yet Napoli’s consistency, even without their most technically gifted player, is impossible to ignore. Their 47 points so far are only six fewer than they collected in the entire 2023-24 campaign. Inter, who won away to Venezia on Sunday, can still overtake them if they win their two games in hand. But with more than half the season gone, Napoli have occupied first place at the end of more than half of the rounds.

We will learn more about Kvaratskhelia’s future in the coming days. In his remarks over the weekend, Conte made it clear he will not resist the player’s sale, saying he could not keep a player “in chains”. But he did add that: “For now, he is a Napoli player. There are steps to take if any team wants to buy him.”

There will be no shortage of suitors. Paris Saint-Germain were presumed front-runners, but Conte’s remarks have likely encouraged more clubs to enquire and Napoli’s owner Aurelio De Laurentiis, famously stubborn about not letting players leave for less than he thinks they are worth, is unlikely to discourage a bidding war.

The most shocking element might be how undaunted Napoli, and Naples, appear. This is not just any player but the one they rechristened as “Kvaradona”, heir to Diego and star of their first Scudetto-winning team for 33 years. A man to whom many murals have been dedicated about the city.

There will be sadness, and no small measure of bitterness about his choice to leave in the middle of a title push, a choice which will never be forgotten. But Conte’s impact has been such that a fanbase who hold tight to all past glories might keep their focus in this optimistic present instead.

“We’re up high right now, and we’ll try to stay there,” he said on Sunday, doing his best to deflect more title talk. “I don’t know what it means that we are up so high, but I know we are annoying people, because there are some now who are worried about Napoli. Losing important players is never nice, but we’ll see what happens in the future. We are ready for whatever comes.”