Last Sunday, Napoli, victims of a shock 1-0 away defeat at Parma, were far from happy. From star striker Gonzalo Higuaín launching into a stream of expletives after being substituted, to president Aurelio De Laurentiis being dragged away from a disgruntled fan outside the Stadio Ennio Tardini, it was abundantly clear that the frustrations from a relatively poor season -- they're now 12 points adrift of second-placed Roma with six games left to play -- are beginning to spill over.
Rafael Benítez struggling to get the best from Marek Hamšík
Marek Hamšík, Napoli’s biggest star, has stagnated. Is his manager to blame?
Michael Steele
More from our team sites
The dropped points this season have often been put down to their persistent failure to address their age-old defensive woes. But while Raúl Albiol admittedly hasn't lived up to expectations since joining the partenopei from Real Madrid in the summer, Napoli's consistent inconsistency can't solely be put down to their defence. Napoli didn't lose the game against Parma at the back. Their problems were too profound to explain away with individual mistakes.
Rather, the loss was an illustration of Rafael Benítez’s continued struggle to marry Napoli’s fascinatingly unpredictable offensive play with his more regimented, possession-based strategy.
Much of the Parma post-mortem has centred on the continuation of Marek Hamšík’s wretched campaign, with Napoli’s captain and playmaking genius anonymous once again. The Slovak has been perhaps the most consistently impressive player in Serie A over the last few seasons, with his incisive passing and industry from midfield a key part of Napoli’s quick transitions under Walter Mazzarri. Since he returned from an injury back in January, however, he’s lost his characteristic verve.
Atalanta director Pierpaolo Marino, who was the very man who brought Hamšík to the San Paolo, has waded into the debate and blamed Benítez's tactics for his decline. "Hamšík has a great ability to find space; I think in Benítez's formation he is bottled in a position," Marino told RAI's Domenica Sportiva.
Marino has a point. One of Hamšík’s greatest attributes is his ability to drift into space, particularly from deep. Under Benítez’s predecessor, he would be given the freedom to float across an attacking midfield band, where he could boost numbers out wide by interchanging with advancing wing-backs, or link with the equally mobile strikers ahead of him.
Unlike Juan Mata, with whom Benítez worked effectively at Chelsea, or Dries Mertens, who has occasionally been fielded as in his position since the Belgian arrived at the San Paolo last summer, Hamšík's game is more physical. Mazzarri exploited this by having his teams sit back and burst into space in the opposition half, rather than looking to dictate the play, and using Hamšík as a key cog in one of Europe's most devastating counterattacking sides.
Tactically, Benítez might be Mazzarri’s antithesis. Rather than allow opponents possession, he prefers to control the game in the opposition’s half. A more compact attacking shape means Hamšík has less room to drift, and is generally pushed high and narrow, where he’s less able to conduct Napoli’s attacking moves or shake off a tracking midfielder with a late run into the opponent’s penalty area.
Whether Benítez would be willing to break from his traditional system in order to allow the Slovak freedom to roam is a doubt
Hamšík’s shackling is an embodiment of a broader change that has taken place at the San Paolo over the last year, with Mazzarri’s willingness to allow his attackers an unpredictable freedom of expression replaced by Benítez’s micromanagement. That isn’t necessarily a negative for the team; Napoli have been successful with players like José Callejón breaking into the box with carefully timed runs from the flanks.
But against well-drilled teams capable of nullifying Napoli’s wide threat, the partenopei are left with little penetration. On Sunday, Parma were excellent at shutting down Napoli’s supply to their wide forwards, while drowning Hamšík in a sea of midfielders. The result was Napoli being left with neither an option on the flanks nor through the middle. Seemingly devoid of ideas, Benítez resorted to three almost like-for-like changes, which unsurprisingly had limited impact.
One of the ways in which Hamšík could be unshackled from his current position is by being given a deeper, freer role. However, that’s easier said than done. He’s almost a hybrid of a classic attacking midfielder and a central midfielder, and thus wouldn’t really fit into either the deep-lying playmaking role usually taken by Jorginho, or the defensive shield provided by Gökhan Inler. A simple switch to a 4-3-3 would no doubt be more Hamšík-friendly, but whether Benítez would be willing to break from his traditional system in order to allow the Slovak freedom to roam is a doubt.
It’s a frustrating conundrum, with the old accusations of tactical inflexibility levelled at Mazzarri now used to criticise Benítez. The Spaniard may have eased the creative burden on Hamšík, but has done so at the cost of diminishing his attacking threat altogether. He now needs to show he’s got a pragmatism which Mazzarri lacked, and tweak his system rather than repeating the same mistakes. Hamšík is simply too good to be a passenger.
See More:
