A FANS' VOICE IS THE LOUDEST

A couple of weeks ago I made a pilgrimage to the Diego Armando Maradona Stadium to see Napoli take on Inter Milan. A top-of-the-table clash in Serie A might seem a strange place to start a column in The NLP, but please do bear with me.

- Gregor ROBERTSON

Naples is some place. Europe's largest one-club city. A giant shrine to the little genius who graced their team more than three decades ago. And it does not take long traversing its warren of tight, high-sided and chaotic streets and alleys to realise that the football club is the beating heart of the city – and most powerful representation of its people.

Heck, the bunting is still up across the city from the party they threw there in 2023, when Napoli won their first (and only) Scudetto without Maradona.

The stadium, meanwhile, is a giant, hulking bowl of concrete and rusting steel. Inside, the atmosphere crackles. But my guess would be that it hasn't changed a bit since the 1990s, when James Richardson and Channel 4's Gazzetta Football Italia introduced me to what was the best league on the planet.

In the last few decades, of course, the balance of power in Europe has shifted. The Premier League now reigns supreme. A global TV audience has made the English top flight the richest league on earth. But, after witnessing the deep connection between club and city in Naples, I found myself asking: at what cost to the places and communities upon which it was built?