Cavani triple keeps pressure on Juve

Another hat-trick from Napoli's Edinson Cavani closed the gap on Juventus at the top of Serie A and ensured we could have a title race after all, explains Ben Lyttleton...

 

"Too much panettone!" That was the accusation levelled at leaders Juventus after their surprising home defeat to ten-man Sampdoria as Serie A action returned after the winter break. Of more concern to Antonio Conte's side was a knee injury sustained to key midfielder Claudio Marchisio: a long-term absence would hurt his team, though Monday morning's prognosis was that he might only miss two weeks, which includes next week's important game against a revitalised AC Milan side.

 

Milan beat Siena 2-1 and have now won six of their last seven games. They remain well off the pace in the title race but are nine points off Lazio in the race for third place. In recent seasons, January has been a crucial month for the team: last year, they bought Maxi Lopez and Sulley Muntari (despite trying to buy Carlos Tevez) and the year before, Mark van Bommel and Antonio Cassano.

 

Last week, Gazzetta dello Sport suggested they were trying to raise funds for a Mario Balotelli bid by selling Alex Pato (€15m to Corinthians), Robinho (€10m to Santos) and Ignazio Abate.

 

The striker that everyone wants, though, is Edinson Cavani, and he moved top of the Capocannoniere charts with a devastating hat-trick in Napoli's 4-1 destruction of Roma. Just days after being linked with a €45m move to Manchester City, the Uruguayan single-handedly destroyed Zdenek Zeman's side to keep Napoli in second place and just five points behind Juventus. "Cavanissimo!" declared Gazzetta on Monday.

 

Would Napoli's ambitious owner Aurelio De Laurentiis sell Cavani this month? If so, he would surely be handing the title to Juventus, who are 1.23 to regain their Serie A title, with Napoli 16.5 and third-placed Lazio 27.0. Last August, De Laurentiis, a film producer, showed the finest crafts of his art after calling a dramatic press conference with Cavani he looked downcast and explained that Cavani had made it clear he wanted to move to Manchester and that he would be soon be jumping on a plane to go to "that cold city".

 

Cavani could not keep up the charade, he burst out laughing, interrupted and said, "What plane?!" De Laurentiis said, "Not really!" and Cavani signed a new contract until 2017 complete with a release clause of €60m.

 

The great joy of Cavani is that he can destroy defences wherever he plays: at Palermo, Delio Rossi used him as a deeper-lying 'secondo punto' (second striker), while for Uruguay at the World Cup he played wide right in Oscar Tabarez's side. Napoli boss Walter Mazzarri partnered him with Goran Pandev on Sunday night, surprisingly dropping Lorenzo Insigne (a former Zeman prodigy) to the bench.

 

"I'm an attacking player and as long as I can play up the field, it doesn't make much difference whether I'm solo or out wide," Cavani explained. "We change tactics quite often, which is good because our opponents never know how we are going to play. I like how Mazzarri wants us to play because we have an attacking mentality."

 

Cavani has now overtaken Stephan El-Shaarawy in the goal-charts: with one goal between them, Cavani is 1.84 to end the season as Serie A top scorer with the Milan man 3.65. That price looks a steal if, as seems likely, Cavani stays for the season. "He'll be off in the summer," declared Mino Raiola, agent to many Serie A stars but not, crucially, Cavani. "I thought Raiola was an agent but, reading what he said about Edinson, it seems he's also a wizard," responded his official representative Claudio Anellucci.

 

Given that Napoli sold Ezequiel Lavezzi to PSG for €26m, De Laurentiis will be holding out for more than double that for Cavani. And if Juventus continue to slip up if their Champions League campaign takes off - they are 12.0 to win in Europe - then we could have a Serie A title race on our hands.

 

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