Napoli will ultimately look back on their season with a few fond memories tinged with regret. Having finished third last season, The Partenopei had finally reached the promise land of the Champions League again for the first time since the Maradona era. However, in many ways the competition turned out to be a poisoned chalice as Napoli's small squad struggled to cope with the rigours of the two big competitions.
Having been tipped to challenge for the Scudetto before the start of the season, they looked to be going some way towards fulfilling those prophecies after an impressive early win over champions, Milan. Edinson Cavani scored a hat-trick in that game, one of many excellent performances by the Uruguayan hitman throughout the season. His goals rarely dired up but Napoli's domestic peformances started to worsen with the onset of the Champions League.
They amazingly made it out of the group stages eliminating mega-rich English giants, Manchester City along the way. However their league form suffered as they came back tired from their European excursions. Walter Mazzarri was forced to play the same players since the reinforcements were not up to scratch.Gokhan Inler and Goran Pandev were the only real successes in the transfer market and that was only in patches much like Napoli's overall form.
The Holy Trinity of Ezequiel Lavezzi, Marek Hamsik and Cavani were relied on too heavily to work miracles. In fact Hamsik had a lacklustre season whilst Lavezzi petered out after a scintillating run of form at the turn of the year. "El Pocho" was magnificent in the first leg of the European knockout tie against Chelsea but Napoli were painfully eliminated in extra time. Rather than improve their domestic form, it seemed to demoralise them briefly until a fresh run of form put them back into the driver's seat to finish third. However, as has been the case for a while now with Mazzarri's men, their inconsistency reared its ugly head with just two games to go and a disastrous defeat to Bologna cost them their place at the top table in Europe next season.
The difficulty will now be keeping their best players with Lavezzi already seemingly on his way.
