The Expert: Napoli well equipped to ruin Real Madrid title defence

Napoli will not train at the Bernabeu tonight. They will conduct their final walkthrough training session elsewhere. Maurizio Sarri has his reasons for doing so. He doesn’t want his players to think too much about where they are playing and stress out about it. Anxiety can cause a sleepless night, disrupting Napoli's preparation.

For two months they have had to shut out some of the stories about the Bernabeu that make it out to be football’s Temple of Doom. Jorge Valdano likes to say that the experience for visiting teams is like 95 minutes in a “dentist’s chair.” “Games at the Bernabeu last a lifetime,” warns Fabio Capello, who has sat in both dug-outs at this ground. One of his former players at Real Madrid, the pastry-loving Antonio Cassano apparently sent an SMS to his friend Lorenzo Insigne this week advising him not to look up. “The stadium goes on forever.”

But Sarri’s decision is not entirely driven by fear. It is a careful motivational ploy. He wants his players to be awe-inspired by their surroundings as they walk out onto the pitch to the Champions League anthem. He is counting on the emotional charge it will give as many of them see the Bernabeu for the first time.

There will be 4,000 travelling fans. A noisy speck of blue in a sea of white. Diego Maradona is in town. “I’ve come to see Napoli win.” And the holders are aware of the effect he can have on this team. Judging by Marca’s coverage, Real are no longer facing Napoli. They are facing Maradona’s Napoli. His presence alone, the charisma of a living legend, has been known to bring out the best in these players. A visit to Naples last month was followed by a victory away at another of the game’s great arenas, San Siro.

For all that, Sarri accepts that there will be moments when Napoli get scared. “It’s inevitable. It happens to everyone.” But a number of Napoli’s veteran players see no reason to be afraid and it isn’t just a front. Raul Albiol played 119 times for Real Madrid. “It’s my home,” teammate Jose Callejon told La Sexta. He is still buddies with Cristiano Ronaldo. Goalkeeper Pepe Reina also has good memories of this place. “I haven’t been back to the Bernabeu for a while. The last time was with Liverpool in 2009.” And how did that go, Pepe? “We won.” 

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Italian teams going to the Bernabeu and winning is not ancient history either. Milan won here in 2009. Juventus did it in 2008 when Alessandro Del Piero scored a doppietta and received a standing ovation from the Bernabeu crowd. Roma became the first Serie A club in 35 years to silence it in 2002 and knocked Real out again five years later. They could have done the same last season had Edin Dzeko and Mohamed Salah been more clinical.

It’s also probably worth bearing in mind that Real have been eliminated in seven of their last eight ties with Italian sides when not playing at a neutral venue and they go into this one as second seeds after failing to top their group for the first time in four years. Sporting came close to winning at the Bernabeu on Matchday 1 only for Cristiano Ronaldo and Alvaro Morata to save face right at the death. Real were also behind against Legia Warsaw in Poland until five minutes from the end.

Of course performances like these were also a feature of their European campaign last season. We mentioned the Roma game, which was followed by a 2-0 defeat away to Wolfsburg in the first leg of the quarter-final. It’s hard to square this with a team that is currently both European and Club World Cup champions and went a record-breaking 40 games unbeaten. Until of course you look at the names on the teamsheet. Real have the better individuals but, by virtue of Sarri’s coaching, Napoli are greater than the sum of their parts. The football they play is the most attractive in Italy, drawing comparisons with Sacchi’s Milan and they’re unbeaten in 18 games in all competitions, a run stretching back to the end of October.

There is a lot to preoccupy Zinedine Zidane. Like Napoli's lightening fast counter-attack. We saw this in the 7-1 destruction of Bologna, particularly for Insigne’s goal, which started with some quick-thinking from Reina. Then there’s Napoli's left hand-side. Faouzi Ghoulam, Marek Hamsik and Insigne can be pure poetry in motion. Real's right flank will come under some pressure. Rushing Dani Carvajal back is not ideal.  Zizou changed system to a 3-4-3 when Danilo went off injured against Osasuna at the weekend. Carvajal is expected to play on Wednesday, but he will need to shake off any rust in a hurry.

Napoli’s low centre-of-gravity, no-reference point and hyper technical attack will also be on Zidane's mind as kick-off approaches. Dries Mertens has scored more goals in the league and the Champions League [20] this season than Ronaldo [16]. Sky Italia likened him to Romario at the weekend. Ultimo Uomo took a different perspective comparing Mertens with Steph Curry.

Curry has been held up as proof that the ‘hot hand’ exists, explaining that, to him, once he’s in the zone, the basket feels bigger. With Dries, when he makes one shot, all of a sudden he sees nothing but net and scores one after the other in quick succession.  Just look how long it took for him to score twice against Pescara [four minutes], Benfica [seven minutes] and Bologna [10 minutes]. Then consider the back-to-back hat-tricks he scored in December. The first one, against Cagliari took 36 minutes. The second one, against Torino just nine. It was the fastest in Serie A since Andriy Shevchenko’s against Perugia in 2000. Real will have to freeze him out of the game and hope he catches a cold, otherwise they could feel the burn.

While the spotlight in Real’s opposition analysis will inevitably fall on Mertens, spare a thought for Sarri. It’s the style of play he has introduced over the last 18 months that has turned first Higuain and now Mertens into goal machines. When Real were winning the Champions League in 2000, Sarri was still working in a bank and coaching an amateur side in his spare time in Tuscany. Wednesday vindicates the decision he made all those years ago to leave his position at Banca Toscana behind and do the only job he would ever do for free. The job he loves. It’ll be a proud moment for Sarri. Reflecting on it earlier this month, he smiled: “One day I’ll be able to say I coached a Champions League game at the Bernabeu.”