Luciano Spalletti confirmed that he will leave Napoli at the end of the Serie A season after winning their first league title since the days of Diego Maradona.
Speaking at an event at the Italian national team’s Coverciano training centre, Spalletti said that he would take time away from football and would not be immediately moving to coach any other team.
The 64-year-old guided Napoli to their third Scudetto, their first since 1990,with five matches to play after a magical campaign in which his team played one of the most thrilling football in Europe.
Napoli’s title triumph was the crowning glory of Spalletti’s long and eventful coaching career which had brought plenty of plaudits but few trophies. It was his first Italian league crown and first trophy of any sort in Italy since the Italian Cup won at Roma in 2008.
Spalletti will effectively be on gardening leave for next season and will return to his vineyard in Tuscany, as he did during the two-year period before he took charge at Napoli when he was still under contract with Inter Milan after being replaced by Antonio Conte.
The dominant fashion in which Napoli won the title led Napoli fans to hope of a new dawn of glory similar the one led by Maradona in the 1980s. Carried on by attacking talents Victor Osimhen and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Napoli also reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League for the first time in their history.
Osimhen called Spalletti “a genius” in a recent interview with France Football and the veteran coach leaving now casts doubt over whether Napoli’s star player Osimhen will stay next season.
He will pack in as Napoli coach on Sunday evening when the newly-crowned champions host relegated Sampdoria at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona. Former Barcelona and Spain coach Luis Enrique is the favourite to replace Spalletti next season.
