De Laurentiis set to send Napoli into retreat before Lazio visit

Napoli's players will not be going home on Friday 6 November. The squad are expected to check into the Gli Dei hotel in Pozzuoli at 19:00 that evening. The hotel already hosts the team's usual pre-match stays. They will leave it only to travel to the Maradona, where league leaders Lazio visit on Sunday 8 November at 12:30 CET (11:30 UK, 06:30 ET).

The squad are returning from five days on the road, split between Turin and Porto, and the results were grim. At the Allianz Stadium, Juventus won 2-0 with goals from Alajbegovic in the 70th minute and Boga in the 87th. Napoli managed one shot on target, and Marianucci was sent off.

At the Dragão, McTominay had Napoli level at 1-1 at half-time. Then Veiga scored in the 71st minute, Kiwior in the 80th and Aghehowa from the penalty spot in the 90th. That is three goals in 19 minutes, conceded to a Porto side who had not won a single point in this season's Champions League.

From confrontation to lockdown

The retreat is the president's second move in a matter of days. On Sunday, after the Turin defeat, De Laurentiis confronted the players about their second-half attitude. He then phoned Allegri to assure him of his support. The two messages belong together: the coach stays, but the players are being held to account.

On the eve of the Porto game, Politano had said: "We keep falling back into the same mistakes we made." A day later his words read like a diagnosis nobody had managed to turn into a cure.

"We keep falling back into the same mistakes we made."

Our question is a different one, and it is an awkward one. A retreat is meant to remove distractions and keep a group together. But the Napoli who fell apart in Turin between the 70th and 87th minutes, and in Porto from the 71st, did not show a lack of focus in the days before those games. They showed they could not hold up during the games themselves.

Against Lazio, Allegri will also be without Buongiorno, Badiashile, Favasuli, Di Lorenzo, Spinazzola, Olivera, Lobotka, Neres, Alisson Santos and De Bruyne, with Marianucci suspended. Two days shut in a hotel will not produce a full-back or a holding midfielder. Whoever built this squad, and whoever manages it on the pitch, will have to answer for that, not for what the players do away from football.

That said, the timing makes sense. Napoli are eighth with 14 points after ten matches, half Lazio's total. Fourth place, the target Allegri set himself, is already 9 points away. Against the leaders at the Maradona, there is simply no room for another second-half collapse.

A retreat makes nobody play better. But after Sunday, no one will be able to say they did not understand what was at stake. The rest will be settled at the Maradona against Lazio at 12:30.