Newspaper identifies cliques in divided Napoli dressing room as pressure mounts on Allegri

Newspapers in Italy claim that there are too many ‘cliques’ within a divided Napoli dressing room, which they claim could be part of the reason why Massimiliano Allegri has struggled to get the squad going in the early stages of the 2026-27 season.

Pressure on head coach Allegri rose on Wednesday night when Napoli fell to a 4-1 defeat against Porto in the Champions League. This leaves them with just three points from four games in the competition and at risk of not qualifying for the knock-out play-off rounds.

Allegri has now lost seven of his first 14 competitive matches in charge of Napoli and has won only five. The Partenopei are currently eighth in the Serie A table with 14 points after 10 matches, and are already 14 points off the league leaders, Lazio.

To make matters worse, senior players appear visibly frustrated with the situation: Kevin De Bruyne was seen having it out with teammate Lorenzo Lucca during Wednesday’s defeat against Porto, and Matteo Politano seemed to call out some of his teammates for not taking responsibility during his post-match interview.

Politano has regularly appeared in the media room to give post-match interviews and conferences after Napoli defeats in recent weeks, and it was suggested to him on Wednesday that it is ‘always’ him who shows up to apologise and give an explanation.

“It would be nice if a few other teammates came here to give an explanation and not just us Italians, but never mind,” said a frustrated Politano.

La Gazzetta dello Sport has pointed the finger at two non-Italians within the Napoli dressing room, both of whom have been with the squad for a long time and were key players in Napoli’s two recent Scudetto triumphs. They are Andre-Frank Zambo Anguissa and Amir Rrahmani.

La Gazzetta dello Sport also suggests that there are too many cliques within the Napoli dressing room and not enough togetherness as a squad, on or off the pitch.

They suggest that, for example, the Italian block of Giovanni Di Lorenzo, Politano and Leonardo Spinazzola are close friends off the pitch, and that the same goes for Noa Lang and David Neres, Billy Gilmour and Scott McTominay and Alisson Santos and Giovane.

However, there are also some players whom La Gazzetta dello Sport claim are too individualistic, including De Bruyne, Anguissa, Stanislav Lobotka and Rasmus Hojlund.

The Pink Paper warns that it is the players’ responsibility to sort themselves out as much as it is the head coach’s and that if they continue to act as a fragmented group, then it will be ‘a long way to go’ until the end of the season.