With our current form, we will get massacred at the Camp Nou. But if we can get out of our current funk, it's possible. Barcelona is not unbeatable. Roma did it last season. And Manolas played a key part in that game, and is now with us! Well.... one can always hope.
If it wasn't for Sarri we would be Fiorentina v2, and the man barely asked for any raises - show some respect to a club icon. I don't care if he chose Juve over being unemployed or waving goodbye to his career in top football by going to China. Ancelotti, however, almost blatantly sabotaged Napoli by going back to his 442 for the first time since his Parma days, he came here to experiment (not acceptable) and I called him out. Apparently I'm not a Napoli fan because I don't accept such disrespectful behavior towards us. He wouldn't dare play his park the bus with long balls 442 crap tactic if he saw us as a big club.
I agree to all you say, but I also believe Ancelotti was the most likely to beat Barcelona. But of course he ruined Sarri's work. The Atlantic which is a very tactical magazine and subscription only, called Sarri's Napoli one of the top 20 most beautiful teams of all times. That said, as long as ADL is owner we ill not go further. Ancelotti only accelerated the decline but it was obvious and I have said it for years that we would follow Arsenal's path. ADL hsa killed any ambition. It is no coincidence that all three coaches before Ancelotti ;eft because they were disillusioned. I was even the only one that did not attack Higuain and blamed ADL when he left us. You cannot expect top players to not show ambition.
Why do you think that? We love allowing possession and sitting deep in CL... and that's exactly what they want from us. Liverpool and PSG are much different to Barcelona in that they don't excel as much with possession and would rather take advantage of their quick forwards by playing more direct football. Ancelotti's tactic, I'm sure, works well against almost any top team in Europe because they almost all play alike (433 direct and fast football, putting the ball at great risk to score a goal), but we have yet to see his Napoli against teams like Barcelona and M. City that hold on to the ball and wait for a gap Imagine us sitting in our box with two 4-man-lines and 2 forwards further up to (hopelessly) pressure Barcelona. What do you think would happen if Messi, Suarez, Alba, Griezmann, and whatnot were allowed to just pass it around our penalty box for almost 90 minutes straight? I don't think it would end very well. And how would we score? A Callejon dive? Perhaps a one in a thousand finish from Mertens? That is if we manage to get to those chances. If you can't hit back at Barcelona you won't beat them, it's that simple - even when they went out (last 2 seasons) they scored a lot of goals. We should focus on Serie A, and hope for an inspirational (mostly, for the fans) performance against Barcelona
Barcelona also struggles against teams that park the pass. Ancelotti would do that. Let’s be honest with Sarri we would play beautiful but it is hard to beat them at their own game. Gattuso does not have the experience.
Ya we're fcuked. It's fine let's see how we do against a team challenging for the Champions League. It'll give us a good indicator as to how far back we are from the elite.
Mentally yes, but to date I can't remember the last time we got an absolute beating in a competetive game. Like a 3-0+ loss.
i think it was 3-0 or 3-1 loss against sarri's empoli.It wasn't a competitive game but worst napoli game i remember
I hope Gattuso prepares for this match well. Top 4 is gone, I want to see us go down fighting in the champions league as this is probably the last time we'll be in this competition until 2021/22
I didn't enjoy Sarri's football so much, and you seem to take the opposite of that for granted, spurting out expressions like "Let's be honest", as if that had anything to do with honesty. Honesty is what I do here whenever I state my opinions without heeding the majority's vote. Anyway, I talked to a friend of mine and his father who is a coach about this, and he actually agreed with me, and I won't lie to you, I was surprised. He actually invited me to his house and had me eat his wife's delicious cooking while he was showing me the games of other teams, showing me how the other teams do stupid things on the pitch just like you were complaining about us doing, and create less chances overall, yet manage to score. He told me that we definitely would have been up there if we could only score and avoid individual defensive errors. He showed me a lot of shit and he was a very cool guy, though I went there only for the food at first, as my cooking is terrible and a bit worse. Anyway, I had long ago reached this simple conclusion, that we hadn't been that bad, or rather, that we had in fact been better than most, yet sucking at individual skill rather than Jorginho boy leaving some of our fan girls or Ancelloti being incapable of managing a 5 year old, before he showed me all the things that my memory had vaguely remembered from the few games of other teams that I had watched, like the fact that their midfield had been just as vulnerable as you hate it in ours, yet they had been able to defend and score.
He'll finally die of dwarfishness, maybe. Just kidding, I wonder about that as well, we shall see. We are stuck in a rut, as all of our defenders have performed badly, not even just inconsistently. So whom should we rely on? Shall we put Kalidou in, whose form has been so bad that a cow would probably have played better? With our current defense, if we do not step it up to the last degree at last, I really do not see us avoiding a disaster, as Barca is no crappy SA team defending and counterattacking. They'll push and try to utilize our defensive weaknesses to the fullest extent, which could see us destroyed. They'll be lacking Suarez and Demme in attack, though.
I'm worried our midfield will lack balance because both zielinski and Fabian want to be the attacking asset
I thought Milik was very good in this match. He provided a great pass for Callejon and he was overall doing a good job. Or is he supposed to come and play better than the whole Barcelona team combined? You can't be serious now... I feel like you should just put that sentence into a document and copy it whenever Milik finishes a game.