Lobotka and McTominay renewal talks stall like Anguissa's at Napoli

Sporting director Giovanni Manna has met Maxime Nana, André-Frank Anguissa's long-standing agent, several times to try to close the Cameroon midfielder's renewal. Every conversation has ended without concrete progress. The same wall has gone up around Stanislav Lobotka and Scott McTominay, the other two pillars of Napoli's midfield.

Napoli face a decision in the coming months: meet the trio's financial demands, or let the contracts run down towards their natural expiry and risk losing them for free, or selling them for less than they are worth now.

On the individual cases, much of the path is already set. Lobotka's contract runs until 30 June 2027, and the club can trigger a unilateral option to extend it to 2028 even without his agreement. McTominay still has two years on his deal but no agreement on an extension, with Real Madrid — under José Mourinho — watching. On Anguissa, whose contract expires in June, there is no concrete negotiation under way: the path points towards a departure at the end of the season.

The backbone of the midfield

This isn't three isolated cases — it's the backbone of the midfield that has held the team together through a difficult start to the season. It's the same department where head coach Allegri had to improvise the Gilmour-Lobotka pairing against Bologna because McTominay and Anguissa were both unavailable through injury. Delaying a solution on three renewals at once, inside a squad already flagged as the oldest in Serie A, and after a summer window that closed with a net spend of €47.5m, means gambling the construction of the next few years' team on the edge of expiry dates.

At the moment no new meeting between the parties has been fixed. The January window, which reopens on 2 January and closes on 2 February 2027, remains the next point at which the club will have to start untangling at least one of these three knots.