Qualiano deal stalls as Lucca's Napoli future already in doubt

Napoli have no match this Saturday 26 September, so the Italian papers fill the pause with what's happening off the pitch: a training-ground project that is stalling, question marks over a striker signed only weeks ago, and a full slate of national-team news.

On the squad, with the transfer window closed for weeks, attention has already turned to next summer — and not kindly towards Lucca, the striker who arrived from Udinese at the end of the window. TuttoMercatoWeb runs a blunt headline:

He'll leave in the summer, the new striker has already been chosen!

The same outlet floats a second, unverified line: that Napoli's next centre-forward could once again come from Udinese.

On injuries, Il Mattino is tracking McTominay's return step by step after his cardiac ablation surgery, weighing recovery timelines against the games ahead. La Repubblica goes further, asking whether the Scot could already be available for Napoli-Frosinone on 10 October — a question, not a certainty.

National-team duty fills the rest of the pages. Sky Sport has a flat headline on a possible Vergara absence for Italy:

He'll be watching from the stands

Il Mattino instead tells the human side of the wait, describing a Vergara who "hasn't slept a wink" on the eve of a possible debut. Corriere dello Sport-Stadio, in its first edition, opens on another Napoli angle: "Italy, give it everything. Ghoulam backs Favasuli."

La Repubblica closes the picture with a round-up of the treatment room, from Anguissa to Meret, flagging a longer-than-expected recovery for Alisson Santos.

Our take

It's striking that, barely a month after the window shut, a striker signed to strengthen the squad — Lucca — is already being written off and pointed towards the exit. If that's accurate, it says more about the summer's planning than about the player. The gap between De Laurentiis's public announcements on the training centre and what reporters actually find on site — inspections, yes; agreement, no — deserves more attention than the papers gave it, reduced to a few lines in Saturday's editions. And on a day full of national-team news and medical bulletins, the question that should stay open goes unasked by any of these headlines: how does Napoli climb out of ninth place with 7 points from 5 games?