Carlo Ancelotti believes Napoli have a ‘small advantage’ on their Serie A rivals after a summer of minimal changes.

Napoli have kept their best players this summer, while adding Giovanni Di Lorenzo, Kostas Manolas and Eljif Elmas to their squad.

That comes in contrast to Inter, Juventus, Roma and Milan all changing Coach and making extensive alterations in terms of personnel.

“I’m calm and I will be until September 2,” Ancelotti told Gazzetta dello Sport.

Carlo Ancelotti believes Napoli have a ‘small advantage’ on their Serie A rivals after a summer of minimal changes.

Napoli have kept their best players this summer, while adding Giovanni Di Lorenzo, Kostas Manolas and Eljif Elmas to their squad.

That comes in contrast to Inter, Juventus, Roma and Milan all changing Coach and making extensive alterations in terms of personnel.

“I’m calm and I will be until September 2,” Ancelotti told Gazzetta dello Sport.

“The long nature of the transfer window bothers me a bit, but now I’m getting used to it.

“I didn’t force De Laurentiis to sign James and Lozano, I threatened him! I’m joking, of course, but we’re evaluating many situations.

“I’ve also talked to the Coach about it. He explained to me that we couldn’t close a deal for Pepe.

“In short, we all want to improve the team because we want to win things. Teams are still incomplete as the market is in full swing, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens.

“Napoli will get to the start of the season quite tried-and-tested. We mustn’t experiment in our play so that we’ll be more fluent.

“That may give us a small advantage over our rivals, who have changed something.

“We still need Koulibaly and Allan back. The former will return on Ferragosto [August 15] and will play in Florence on August 24.

“I’ll probably rest him against Juve… Manolas is really strong, he’s aggressive in the right way.

“He’s a defender who guarantees physicality and competition in the air. Elmas has already shown intelligence, ability and strength in one-on-ones, even if he hasn’t done much training with us yet.

“He must get used to the way we play, but he has a chance here.”

The Coach was then asked about Arkadiusz Milik, who has been linked with making way for Mauro Icardi.

“Milik is only behind in terms of fitness. We’ve talked to him clearly and he’s one of the strikers we have available.

“The other is Mertens, who’s done so well as a centre-forward in recent years.”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Tickets Kit Collector