Giuseppe Mascara's move from Napoli to Novara seemed insignificant, but it may have a big say in determining Italy's Champions League places this season
Aurelio De Laurentiis had given up hope of receiving his bonus. When the Napoli owner agreed to hand Giuseppe Mascara to Novara in January the terms were simple enough: the deal would initially be a free transfer but if the player's new employers managed to stay up, they would then have to pay a small fee. By the beginning of this week, that was looking most unlikely. With five games left to play, Novara trailed 17th-placed Genoa by 11 points.
The forward's contribution had been modest, a return of three goals and one assist in 14 appearances prompting him to inform fans last week that they "still hadn't seen the true Mascara", but he could hardly be held up as a scapegoat. The manager Attilio Tesser's safety-first, five-at-the-back formations were doing little for a team in desperate need of wins, not draws. Even Novara's leading scorer, the midfielder Marco Rigoni, had just seven goals.
To a certain extent, Mascara was happy just to be playing again. He had left Catania – the team he supported as a boy – for Napoli in January 2011 in order to have one last crack at the big-time, playing in European competition for the first time in his career at the age of 31. But while a pair of Champions League appearances this season represented the fulfilment of a dream, the reality of being behind Edinson Cavani, Ezequiel Lavezzi and Marek Hamsik in the pecking order began to grate. He missed first-team football.
With Eduardo Vargas arriving from Universidad de Chile in January, Mascara's opportunities looked set to become more limited still. Instead he chose to depart on good terms. "I have honoured and sweated for your shirt as if it was that of my own Catania because I know how much it is loved," he tweeted as the move to Novara went through. "Thank you Napoli. The Mascara family will always carry you with us in our hearts." A warm reception was waiting when he returned to the San Paolo with his new club last Saturday.
Were he to return again this weekend, he might just get mobbed. On Wednesday afternoon he had done more to aid their chances of returning to the Champions League than he might ever have managed by staying at the club for the remainder of the season. De Laurentiis's bonus payment had arrived not in the form of cash, but instead a perfectly struck free-kick which kissed the inside of the Federico Marchetti's left-hand upright before nestling in the back of the net to give Novara a 2-1 win over Lazio .
"Would I like to dedicate this goal to Napoli? No, it was important for my team first and foremost," insisted Mascara afterwards. "But if it pleased Napoli too, then so much the better." It certainly had done. The conclusion that his strike had done more for his former employers than his present ones was hard to escape.
Novara, despite the victory, and despite having played their most expansive football in some time after returning at last to a 4-3-1-2, would still need to make up nine points on Genoa (since the latter would win a head-to-head tiebreaker), as well as overtaking Lecce, in the next four games to escape the relegation zone. As more than one newspaper noted, their best hope of survival at this stage may lie with the possibility of others being docked points when judgements are passed in the ongoing match-fixing investigations.
Napoli, by contrast, were able to take advantage of Lazio's defeat by closing to within a point of the third-placed Biancocelesti. Dreams of a Champions League return had looked to be fading from view as Lazio led 1-0 at home to Lecce in the 90th minute on Sunday afternoon, but instead Valeri Bojinov arrived in that game with an injury-time equaliser. Combined with Mascara's winner on Wednesday, it had allowed Napoli to trim the deficit by five points in the space of four days.
To do that they had to win their own fixtures too, of course, and successfully eased past Lecce 2-0 on Wednesday just as they had Novara at the weekend. That was no straightforward task; Lecce might have been 18th, but had lost only once in their last 10 games under Serse Cosmi. Napoli were aided by the renewed sharpness of Cavani, whose goal against Lecce was his 100th since arriving in Italy, but perhaps most crucially the return to fitness of Christian Maggio.
Napoli had managed just two points in five games since the full-back was injured in their Champions League last-16 second leg defeat to Chelsea, and in total have managed only 10 in 10 when he has not started this season. It is no coincidence – Maggio offering the team a thrust and dynamism on the counterattack that is not easily replaced when he is absent.
But in the donkey derby that is Italy's race for third place this season, Napoli were not the only team to benefit from Lazio's latest stumble. Internazionale have pulled up lame so many times in this contest that some observers had wondered whether the humane thing would be to simply put them out of their misery, yet under the guidance of Andrea Stramaccioni they have closed the gap on Lazio from 10 point to three in the space of five games.
That this was achieved despite Inter drawing two of those fixtures tells you everything you need to know about the state of the competition this year. Each of Lazio and Udinese, who were fourth when Stramaccioni took over, have collected a mere four points from those last five rounds of fixtures. But Inter, like Napoli, could also celebrate the return of an important weapon – Wesley Sneijder scoring twice in his second appearance under the new coach to help secure an impressive 3-1 win at Udinese. The Friuliani had previously lost just once at home all season.
With Inter set to face Lazio on the final weekend of the season, they are now unquestionably back in the running. In part thanks to a bonus payment from a transfer that they were never involved with in the first place. Read More
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