Hellas Verona – Napoli: Conte Already Under The Cosh (3-0)

Delays in the transfer market and unhappiness from the coach, the last thing that Napoli needed was a bad start to the season. Hellas Verona grew into the game and Antonio Conte’s team “melted like snow in the sun” on his Serie A return.

Tactical analysis and match report by Joel Parker.

It was away to Hellas Verona where Kvaradona landed into the psyche and Napoli started to launch itself to the summit. Two years on, the picture is much more gloomy going into the new season.

Napoli has made a coaching upgrade from the horror of last year. Antonio Conte is a serial winner, whose recipe for success is taking on elite teams that are out of Europe. However, the situation between Conte and the prickly president Aurelio De Laurentiis was always going to be fractious. Desperately needing a new center-back, Napoli did land Alessandro Buongiorno from Torino; but Victor Osimhen wants to leave yet there have been limited suitors, Piotr Zieliński has not been replaced and there's no reunification of Conte with Romelu Lukaku.

Hellas Verona performed a miracle to stay in Serie A last campaign. After their owners' shares were seized by the police, the expectation was for Verona to sink in a tight relegation battle but important wins from March onwards were enough. Marco Baroni was rewarded with the Lazio job, so Paolo Zanetti is tasked with the same objective and with a much-changed squad.

Zanetti opted to change his team into a flat 5-2-3 defensive formation. Young center-back Diego Coppola was at the center of the defensive line, with Jackson . . .