Walter Mazzarri has been sacked by Napoli to become the second man sent packing by the ailing Italian champions this season, Italian media reported on Monday.
Since assuming leadership in November following the dismissal of Rudi Garcia, the 62-year-old has led Napoli to ninth place in Serie A prior to their Champions League round of 16 match against Barcelona on Wednesday.
Coach of the Slovakia national team Francesco Calzona, who will oversee the first leg’s visit to Barcelona, is expected to be retained until the conclusion of the current season.
Calzona led Slovakia to the Euro 2024 finals, but he returns to Napoli, where he served as an assistant during the inaugural season of Luciano Spalletti’s tenure, with a monumental task at hand.
Reportedly, Calzona will remain with Slovakia and bring Marek Hamsik, Napoli’s all-time leading appearance maker and the first player to surpass Diego Maradona’s club record for goals scored, along with him.
Napoli cruised to an unprecedented third Scudetto championship last season, but Naples has been in disarray ever since champion coach Marco Spalletti resigned in the offseason.
Napoli are an enormous 27 points behind league leaders Inter Milan after accumulating 15 points from four victories in 12 league contests since Mazzarri assumed leadership.
That is even lower than the 21 goals accumulated by Napoli during Garcia’s 12 league matches in command; Napoli were fourth with that total at the time of the Frenchman’s dismissal.
Even if Italy finishes in fifth place, Napoli’s prospects of reentering the top four and the redesigned Champions League in the following season are incredibly remote.
Napoli are nine points behind both fourth-place Atalanta and fifth-place Bologna, and despite failing to score in nine of Mazzarri’s matches across all competitions, have shown little sign of closing the gap.
Mazzarri’s brief second stint as Napoli manager came to an unsatisfactory conclusion, as he had assisted in the club’s ascent to the top tier of Italian football from 2009 to 2013.
Mazzarri led Napoli to the 2012 Italian Cup, where the club won its first trophy in over two decades by defeating unbeaten league champions Juventus in the championship match.
He departed in May 2013 subsequent to leading an exciting squad that placed second in Italy’s top division, featuring Edinson Cavani, Marek Hamsík, and Ezequiel Lavezzi in the attack.