Napoli unveil new third kit as McTominay exit talk builds

Napoli have not played for thirteen days and the next fixture is still some way off, so Saturday's press has no action on the pitch to report. Instead two separate threads run through the papers: the club's own showcase, and a few lines from the dressing room.

TuttoMercatoWeb raises a transfer-market question instead, with the headline "McTominay, addio a giugno? Clamoroso TMW: Pronta la plusvalenza" (McTominay, a June exit? Sensational TMW claim: the capital gain is ready). The headline gives only this much: the possibility of a sale at the end of the season, with a financial return the club is said to have already factored in. The story is not new out of nowhere — McTominay's contract renewal talks have stalled for weeks, and fears of a departure were already circulating at Napoli before this report.

The rest of Saturday's sports front pages look elsewhere, to the national team and the France-Italy friendly, with nothing more on Napoli. It is a thin day for specific Napoli content, pending a return to talk about matches.

Our take

A couple of lines on a shirt and a headline about a possible exit do not tell the real story: Napoli are ninth, with a start to the season the club did not expect, and today's papers prefer the showcase to the sporting problem. On McTominay, the transfer-market tone glosses over the fact that this is not a fringe player being discussed — he is a starter in central midfield, and the gap over his renewal was already known before this story. Ahead of Frosinone, we are far more interested in whether and how he fits back in — and how Allegri plans to fix a midfield that has already shown more than one crack this season — than in the colour of the next shirt.