Nostalgic Serie A five-a-side teams: picking a lineup for … Napoli
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The series continues in which writers have the task of choosing a boiled-down team from club’s entire history. James Oddy for The Gentleman Ultra. I have to be honest, Napoli are my team. There’s something about the outsider, underdog nature of the club and the city that has always appealed to me. They aren’t part of Italian football or societies traditional old guard. As such my selections in this side are a lot more personal than those of some of the other clubs I’ve picked. I’ve still had a criterion of sorts though, with players drawing from three great eras of the club. The first two Scudetto-winning Napoli sides were full of character and are rightly and hugely loved; my favourite Napoli team, the desperately unlucky Sarriball team of the late 2010s and then the most recent title-winning team of 2022. All of these teams played exciting, attacking football and were exhilarating to watch.
![[Ciro Ferrara of SSC Napoli poses for a portrait in the 1987-88 season.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/714f23510d1846f753896a290cdb526b0975219f/0_0_4175_6137/master/4175.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Goalkeeper was the hardest position to pick for this team. Napoli has had some great players between the sticks; Pepe Reina, Alex Meret, Dino Zoff and Giuliano Giuliani were the other players in consideration. But Napoli had never won a title until Garella arrived in Naples in the summer of 1986. After being a key part of Hellas Verona’s ‘miraculous’ title win a few years before, he was apparently hand picked by Maradona as the Argentinian began plotting his side’s own ascent to the league title.
![[Khvicha Kvaratskhelia of SSC Napoli takes on two Torino players.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/2aff3e9b626b6da078f067c3bf778ade440d496f/0_0_5565_3710/master/5565.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Garella had an almost lumbering bearing about him until it became time to pull off a save. He was spectacular, springing into the air and almost attacking the ball in order to repel it. His was a famously unorthodox, almost-chaotic style of shot stopping, but it was effective. He helped deliver the club’s first Scudetto during his first season, and also picked up a Coppa Italia. Perhaps not the most consistent at times, but it’d fun watching him at five-a-side!.
