Antonio Conte can make few promises as Napoli reign begins with bad defeat | Serie A

Antonio Conte was ready to lead by example. Asked what fans could expect from Napoli this season, during his official unveiling as manager in June, he promised the team would have “una faccia incazzata” – “a pissed-off face”. On the eve of their season opener against Verona, he showed up with one of his own.

“I expected to find a better situation,” he said, as he assessed his team’s readiness for the new campaign. “I thought there might be some positive surprises [to go with the challenges] but I’ve struggled to find any.”

Some desire to temper expectations was understandable. Conte’s appointment brought an immediate rush of optimism to a club that was coming off one of the worst-ever title defences. Serie A champions in 2022-23, Napoli crashed to 10th last season, finishing 41 points behind the Inter team that dethroned them.

It was too easy to blame that collapse on ill-considered managerial appointments. Luciano Spalletti walked away after leading Napoli to their third-ever Scudetto. The club’s owner, Aurelio De Laurentiis claimed to have regretted the decision to succeed him with Rudi Garcia before the Frenchman was done speaking at his first press conference. Neither Walter Mazzarri nor Francesco Calzona knew how to right a listing ship when brought aboard in midseason.

Conte has a different profile to any of them. Notwithstanding a disappointing stint at Tottenham, he is still perceived by many in Italy as a born winner – the man who dragged Juventus back to the top and then did the same for Chelsea and Inter, taking a modest Italy squad to the Euro 2016 quarter-finals in-between.

Yet he is not the one out of the pitch. Conte spoke on Saturday of “nine or 10 players” from Napoli’s title-winning side being sold. Previously he had put the figure at 12. Even without a strict accounting, it is easy to reel off a list of significant departures including Kim Min-jae, Piotr Zielinski, Hirving Lozano and Eljif Elmas.

Will Victor Osimhen soon be added to that list? The striker has trained apart from team-mates all summer, and his unresolved future might be Conte’s greatest frustration. The manager acknowledged from day one that an agreement was in place between player and club for Osimhen to leave. Yet no prospective buyer has been willing to pay his €130m release clause.

Conte repeatedly used the word “bloccato” to describe Napoli’s transfer business – all blocked up waiting for Osimhen’s sale to release the funds to purchase a replacement. Although he has refused to discuss Romelu Lukaku publicly, the manager is understood to be keen on a reunion with a player who served him so well at Inter.

As a counter-point, we might observe that Napoli have delivered Conte requested reinforcements in other parts of the pitch. The club moved decisively to sign Alessandro Buongiorno, a break-out performer at centre-back for Torino last season, for €35m in July. Leonardo Spinazzola and Rafa Marín arrived the same month.

Buongiorno started the club’s Coppa Italia game against Modena on 10 August, but subsequently suffered an ankle injury. Many expected Marín to replace him against Verona, but Conte selected Juan Jesus instead, a choice he would come to regret.

Jesus was at fault as Napoli fell behind just after half-time, giving Dailon Livramento far too much space to jab a cross from Darko Lazovic into the net. He was passive again for Verona’s second goal in the 75th minute, watching Daniel Mosquera run into space in front of him and convert Ondrej Duda’s through-ball.

The game finished 3-0 to Verona, Mosquera sweeping home the final goal from close range in injury time. “In the first half we were the only ones on the pitch,” said Conte. “In the second we melted like snow in the sun.”

To his credit, he chose not to return to his pre-game themes of frustration at the club’s summer business. “We need to offer a humble apology to the Neapolitan people who follow us so passionately for an unacceptable performance, which did not come from nowhere,” he said. “We need to work on every aspect, and we will try to do so.”

Even when invited to talk about transfers specifically, he refused to be drawn into a fresh lament. “Many players could arrive, but this is relative,” said Conte. “We need to resolve the problem upstream of that. I assume responsibility.”

His squad should receive at least some reinforcement this week, with the winger David Neres due to undergo a medical ahead of a transfer from Benfica. Despite the final scoreline, Conte was correct as well about his team playing better than Verona in the first-half. An injury to Khvicha Kvaratskhelia just before the interval played a part.

It is also right to give credit to Verona, and especially their sporting director Sean Sogliano, whose ability to keep this squad competitive through continuous rebuilds has been extraordinary. The Scaligeri sold 12 players of their first-team squad last January only for an unfamiliar group to drag them out of a relegation battle.

This season was expected to be even tougher, with manager Marco Baroni – widely credited for that escape – heading to Lazio and taking the greatest of those winter window success stories, Tijani Noslin, off with him. Michael Folorunsho, Federico Bonazzoli and David Cabal all left too, yet here Verona were on the opening day, winning with a new manager, Paolo Zanetti, and all three goals scored by summer signings.

It is too soon to know where their season will lead, just as it is too early to write off Conte at Napoli. There were a lot of sluggish performances across the league on this opening weekend, with the champions Inter drawing away to Genoa and Milan barely recovering from two goals down in the 89th minute to snatch a point at home to Torino.

Such a heavy defeat, though, will certainly play into Napoli supporters’ frustration with De Laurentiis for failing to build on their first Scudetto in 33 years. As one journalist wrote in the newspaper La Repubblica on Monday: “[Conte] was unfortunately the only person not to realise that Napoli have been rebuilt on one name only: his own.”