Napoli's march to glory rouses southern spirit

Napoli fans are counting down the days until their team finally ends a three-decade Serie A title drought and takes the crown back down south after decades of dominance from the big clubs of the country's richer North.

The Scudetto (championship) will come to southern Italy's biggest club and city for the first time since 1990, when Serie A was widely considered the best league in the world and Diego Maradona was still strutting his stuff in Naples.

A 17-point lead at the top of the division with seven matches remaining means the question is when, rather than if, Napoli will claim the title. Napoli will be crowned champion this weekend if it beats regional rival Salernitana and Lazio fails to win at Inter Milan.

It has been 22 years since any team apart from the big three of Juventus, AC Milan and Inter Milan won Serie A, with Roma dethroning its local rival Lazio in 2001.

Between them the strisciate (striped teams from Turin and Milan) have won the league a total of 74 times, making a title for Napoli a massive event not just for the city of Naples but for the South as a whole.

A huge party is expected to kick off in a chaotic, frequently derided one-club city which is often targeted by what in Italy is called "territorial discrimination", a sort of racism historically directed at the South similar to the prejudice Irish immigrants faced in anglophone nations.

'Symbolic success'

Italy's north-south divide is as stark as it has ever been.

According to the country's official socioeconomic indicators, salaries, employment and access to education, health and cultural services are all significantly better in the North.

GDP per capita in northern regions Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna is around double what it is in Calabria, Puglia or Campania, the region of which Naples is capital.

Lucio Lamberti, a professor at the Polytechnic University of Milan and an expert in economic strategy, says that Napoli's title is "an isolated case of success which Naples deserves but which won't close the divide".

"In the South there is a feeling of being children of a lesser god, and symbolic successes like the Scudetto can feel like a sort of revenge for the people," says Lamberti.

This season teams from the South and central regions of the country have also been having their day in the lower divisions, with Frosinone from Lazio set to be promoted to Serie A as soon as Monday.

In the deep South, Bari, which is owned by Napoli owner and movie impresario Aurelio De Laurentiis could yet snatch Serie B's second automatic promotion place but is more likely to have to try its hand at the playoffs.

'Social importance'

Meanwhile Catanzaro, from Calabria, has been a Serie C sensation after an incredible season in which it ensured promotion to the second tier in March.

"Lower-league football is a difficult financial proposition right now, especially so in the South and in Calabria in particular, which doesn't have a lot of businesses capable of investing sponsorship money," Catanzaro's owner, Floriano Noto, who also runs a chain of supermarkets, said.

"I'm lucky compared to other owners because I have an activity which puts me in contact with a number of businesses up north.

"We're a poor region and sports for us have a huge social importance, it teaches us how to live together... This Scudetto is also for us Calabrians, a reason to be proud."

However, not everyone in the South will be cheering on Napoli. The big northern three, and in particular Juventus, have huge support all over southern Italy and Napoli are also rivals of other clubs in the lower half of the boot.

Salernitana's hardcore fans have asked Napoli fans in Salerno, which is just down the coast from Naples, to not celebrate the title in the city.

"Italian football is about to see a team question the power of the clubs up north," Salernitana ultras wrote last month, "but that has absolutely nothing to do with us."

AFP