Cheerful Conte has Napoli dreaming again after clinical win at Milan

When Antonio Conte looks this happy, you know it is time for rivals to start worrying. The Napoli manager grinned broadly as he strode about his old stomping ground at San Siro, acclaiming players, clapping backs and dispensing belligerent bear hugs. “This is one of the best groups I have worked with in my career,” he told the broadcaster Dazn. “I’m breathing clean, beautiful air. I’m breathing the passion and the enthusiasm.”

His team had just beaten Milan 2-0, moving seven points clear at the top of Serie A after 10 games. A fleeting moment – the teams immediately behind them are yet to play in this midweek round – but still an astonishing turnabout for a Napoli side who finished 41 points behind the champions, Inter, last season.

Is this team for real? Has Conte, appointed as manager in June, restored them already from the worst title defenders of all-time into genuine contenders? Tuesday’s game marked the start of a six-week run that was expected to give us some answers. The fixture list had granted them a relatively gentle start to the season, but now they would face Milan, Atalanta, Inter, Roma, Torino and Lazio (twice) in the run-up to Christmas.

Napoli needed five minutes to show us they are undaunted. The centre-back Amir Rrahmani fed André-Frank Zambo Anguissa in the middle of Milan’s half and he took one touch to turn before releasing Romelu Lukaku with a ball through the middle of the defence. The Belgian shouldered a challenge from Strahinja Pavlovic and finished into the bottom right corner.

It was a goal that encapsulated so much of Napoli’s start to this season: the swagger and the small details. No coach has ever understood Lukaku like Conte does, and the player’s confidence was evident in the way he sent Milan’s 6ft 4in Serbia centre-back to the floor. But the less eye-catching movement of Matteo Politano, pulling wide from the right of attack, also helped create space for Anguissa to deliver the assist.

Lead established, Napoli happily surrendered possession to their hosts, adopting a pose familiar to anyone who has watched Conte sides: deep and compact but ready to uncoil like a spring.

The killer blow, just before half-time, was an act of individual brilliance: Khvicha Kvaratskhelia cutting across the face of the area from the left and firing past the keeper from 20 yards. A movie we have seen before, but no less breathtaking for it.

Milan never recovered. There was a moment, at the start of the second half, when Álvaro Morata headed Samuel Chukwueze’s devilish inswinger past Alex Meret and San Siro rocked to thumping electronica. But after a long silent check, the Spaniard was confirmed to have been a fraction offside.

It takes two teams to play a football match, and this one spoke as loudly to Milan’s flaws as Napoli’s strengths. The Rossoneri are struggling to find their identity under their own new manager, Paulo Fonseca, and his decision to leave Rafael Leão out of the starting XI for a second consecutive league game will only fuel speculation of a rift. Christian Pulisic, Milan’s standout performer this season, also missed the first hour as he recovers from a stomach virus.

But Napoli can only beat the opponents in front of them. They have been doing it with startling consistency. Since opening their campaign with a shocking 3-0 defeat to Verona, they have won eight of nine matches – a sequence interrupted only by a goalless draw at Juventus. The Partenopei have already kept seven clean sheets in Serie A – as many as they managed in their entire 2023-24 campaign.

Their absence from European competition has been an advantage, allowing Conte more time to work on the training ground with players who arrived late in the transfer window. The club’s failure to find a buyer for Victor Osimhen had threatened to throw all of Conte’s plans off course but deals for Lukaku, Scott McTominay and Billy Gilmour were realised in the final week of August.

All have made an impact. Lukaku’s goal on Tuesday was his fourth of the campaign. McTominay has been Napoli’s wildcard, allowing the manager to deploy a hybrid 4-3-3/4-2-4 as he moves forward from midfield to play as a second centre-forward. Gilmour looks ever more at home at the heart of midfield. Conte yelled “Grandissimo! Top!” as he wrapped the former Brighton player in his arms at full-time.

Is it enough to sustain a Scudetto challenge? Realistically, it is too early to say. But there is a lot to like about this Napoli, from the new signings – including Alessandro Buongiorno, as well, at centre-back – to the enduring heroes of the 2022-23 title winning team.

Kvaratskhelia is being asked to track back more than ever under Conte and has frequently been withdrawn before the 90th minute to rescue him from exhaustion. But he is also granted freedom to follow his instincts and move inside with the ball, as he did to such devastating effect on Tuesday. Anguissa looks to have recaptured the form he showed under Luciano Spalletti, while the left-back Mathías Olivera is turning in some of his best performances in a Napoli shirt.

Asked whether the players believe they can win the league again, Kvaratskhelia replied without hesitation: “Yes. Obviously.” Even Conte did not shy away from the prospect, saying: “We can see realistically what we are doing after 10 games. It is something incredible that even the craziest among us would not have expected.”

He stressed that the club’s primary aim was still simply to return to Europe, and ideally the Champions League. “But we want our fans to dream.”

It is his presence, above all, inspiring them to do so. Conte is the manager who wins everywhere he goes: leading Juventus back to the summit after the Calciopoli scandal, Inter to their first Serie A title in more than a decade and Chelsea to a Premier League triumph in-between.

Well, almost everywhere. Defending his record at Tottenham once more on Tuesday night, Conte pointed out that he had inherited a side who were ninth in the table and took them into the Champions League, adding: “I can’t perform miracles.”

Winning the league with Napoli this season might lead a few people to question that assertion, in a city where the iconographies of football and religion so regularly blend into one. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Conte and his team will be called back to San Siro a week on Sunday to face the reigning champions. Their trials have barely begun.