Football | Serie A Preview: Napoli coach taking pragmatic approach to lead

Napoli coach Maurizio Sarri

Sunday, 3:45am
Napoli v Sassuolo
H 1.31, D 6, A 13

Diego Maradona has already promised that he will make a splashy arrival by helicopter if Napoli wins its first Serie A title in more than a quarter of a century.
Napoli coach Maurizio Sarri is taking a more pragmatic approach after the southern club claimed Serie A’s symbolic “winter title” last weekend.
“I don’t attribute any importance to it,” Sarri said of Napoli’s two-point lead over four-time defending champion Juventus and Inter Milan after 19 of 38 rounds in Serie A.
The halfway champion has gone on to win Serie A nearly seven out of every 10 seasons.
The last time Napoli earned the mid-term honor was in 1990, when the team went on to claim its last title. Maradona was the star of the 1990 team and also helped Napoli to the title in 1987 — the club’s only two Serie A championships.
“It’s useless to look at statistics from the past,” Sarri added. “We’ve got to imagine ourselves like marathon runners. We’ve reached the race’s halfway point but we’ve still got 21 kilometers to go.”
The next test comes tomorrow (Sunday, 3:45am) against a Sassuolo lineup that is in sixth place and beat Inter 1-0 last weekend.
Inter can put pressure on Napoli with a win at Atalanta, while Juventus will be seeking its 10th consecutive win at Udinese on Sunday.
Fourth-place Fiorentina, which is three points back, visits struggling AC Milan on Sunday.
Fifth-place Roma, which fired Rudi Garcia on Wednesday, hosts last-place Hellas Verona.
Also this weekend, it’s: Torino vs. Frosinone; Genoa vs. Palermo; Bologna vs. Lazio; Carpi vs. Sampdoria; and Chievo Verona vs. Empoli.
GONZALO’S GOALS. Nobody in Europe’s top leagues is scoring at a faster rate than Napoli’s Gonzalo Higuain.
The Argentine player has 18 goals in 19 Serie A matches —
20 in 23 appearances in all competitions — for a rate of one goal every 89 minutes.
In Europe, only Alex Texeira at Shakhtar Donetsk (22 goals) and Nemanja Nikolic at Legia Warsaw (21 goals) have scored more than Higuain this season, while Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang at Borussia Dortmund also has 18 goals.
Lionel Messi only has nine goals in the Spanish league while Cristiano Ronaldo has 14.
ROMA REVIVAL? With Luciano Spalletti widely expected to be named as the replacement for the fired Rudi Garcia, Roma is hoping the squad can rediscover the form that made it an early season title contender.
With only one win in its last seven Serie A matches, Roma has dropped to fifth place, seven points behind leader Napoli.
Roma never really recovered psychologically from a 6-1 rout by Barcelona in the Champions League in November.
Spalletti coached Roma from 2005-09, winning two Italian Cups and an Italian Super Cup – the Giallorossi’s last titles of any kind. He then spent five years with Zenit St. Petersburg before being fired in March 2014.
MARKET MOVES. Forward Ciro Immobile is close to rejoining Torino on loan from Borussia Dortmund, Luiz Adriano appears on his way out at AC Milan — perhaps to a club in China — and Alessandro Diamanti has joined Atalanta on loan from Watford.
Also, former Manchester United defender Nemanja Vidic ended his contract with Inter Milan by mutual consent. Andrew Dampf, Rome, AP / Oddschecker.com