Diego Maradona returned to Naples last week and admits he was wrong to write off the Partenopei’s chances of toppling the leaders at the top of Serie A

Diego Maradona was back in Naples last week, swapping his old stomping ground at the Stadio San Paolo for an audience instead at the Teatro di San Carlo opera house. Tickets were priced at a whopping €300, but of course they still sold out. On stage, Maradona acknowledged complaints about the cost, but explained: “they told me Pelé had a similar event, and set his tickets at €200. That guy always has to come second.”

It was precisely this showmanship that caused the city to fall so head-over-heels for Maradona in the first place: his unique blend of arrogance, mischief and mirth. That, plus extraordinary talent. Monday’s event was titled ‘Three Times Ten’ - a riff on the Argentinian’s shirt number and the fact that this year marks the 30th anniversary of him helping Napoli to win their first ever Scudetto.

A second followed three years later, but – as Maradona reminded his audience on Monday – there have been no more since. “Napoli is beautiful, unique,” he insisted. “But we need another two Scudetti to become even greater.”

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He expanded on that idea in an interview with Gazzetta dello Sport – discussing what he thought it would take to elevate the Partenopei from a team that has competed in Europe for seven years running into one that could topple Juventus from their perch. “Napoli are missing a player like [Arkadiusz] Milik in top form,” he said. “And they need a deeper bench – with players who can be decisive.”

On the latter point, it would be hard to disagree. Every team could benefit from having more options, and it is true that Juventus have benefited from greater squad depth than their rivals in recent years. Whether or not Napoli need Milik back at this moment in time, however, is rather more open to debate.

When the Poland striker first ruptured his cruciate ligament in October, it appeared as a critical blow. He had scored seven goals in nine appearances – including braces to help sink Milan and Benfica. For a club that had just lost Gonzalo Higuaín in the summer transfer window, he had arrived like some kind of instant saviour: stepping in to lead the line with strength and a composure well beyond his years.

His injury blew a hole in Maurizio Sarri’s tactical schemes. Napoli had no other striker capable of interpreting the No9 role in the same way – of holding off defenders and bringing team-mates into play. Manolo Gabbiadini was too slight and inclined to roam deep. The only other forwards in the first-team squad were all wingers.

Results dipped. Napoli lost consecutive home games against Roma and Besiktas. The club’s directors were roundly chastised for not doing a better job with their contingency planning. They responded by laying the groundwork for the January signing of Genoa centre-forward Leonardo Pavoletti, who completed his move on the third of this month.

But what happened in the meantime was something quite unexpected. Backed into a corner, with Gabbiadini struggling (even when he wasn’t collecting needless red cards), Sarri experimented with Dries Mertens at centre-forward. A good six inches shorter than Milik, and more than 20 kilos lighter, this was hardly a like-for-like exchange.

Initial results were mixed. Mertens scored once but missed other chances in the defeat to Besiktas. He underwhelmed in a loss away to Juventus and then a draw at home to Lazio. Sarri was forced onto the back foot, defending his player by arguing that he was simply exhausted.

And then came December. Mertens set up one goal and another as Napoli won away at Benfica to seal first place in their Champions League group. He followed it up by grabbing a hat-trick against Cagliari and then sticking four past Torino. A further strike in the 3-3 draw with Fiorentina gave him a total of nine goals in four matches that month.

Something had clicked for Sarri’s Napoli, a diminutive forward line of Mertens, Lorenzo Insigne and José Callejón – “marvellous Smurfs”, as Gazzetta dello Sport saw them in those sky blue shirts – dovetailing majestically. Heading into Saturday’s match away to Milan, they were unbeaten in 10 league fixtures. Mertens, with a goal every 99 minutes, owned the best strike rate in the league.

Even Maradona was impressed, although he stopped short of putting this team’s feats on a par with his own. Mertens’s final goal against Torino, an impish chip of Joe Hart, had drawn comparison with the Argentinian’s strikes against Lazio in 1984. “But we have to ask if he was crossing or shooting,” said Maradona. “For me, that was a cross.”

He stopped by team training on Wednesday, with players reporting that this was the one and only time Sarri had ever allowed them to cut a session short. Hugs were shared and selfies taken. Napoli’s owner, Aurelio De Laurentiis, expressed his desire to appoint Maradona as a global ambassador for the club, but only once the former player has resolved his outstanding tax dispute with the Italian government.

Would there be a ‘Maradona effect’ on Napoli’s performance against Milan? In truth, they did not even really need one. The Partenopei travelled to San Siro intent simply on continuing to play the same open, expansive football that had already dragged them back into the top three. And, for half an hour, they succeeded.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Napoli’s Lorenzo Insigne celebrates his opener against Milan at San Siro on Saturday. Photograph: Matteo Bazzi/EPA

Napoli began in spectacular fashion, scoring twice inside nine minutes. On both occasions, Mertens was the creator – first freeing Insigne down the left with a scandalous cross-pitch pass delivered against his own direction of movement, and then releasing Callejón with a crafty through-ball around the back of Milan’s Davide Calabria.

The Belgian himself should have made it 3-0, fluffing his lines when clean through on goal after a well-timed run. In-between, he almost generated another chance with a spinning pass out from the deepest part of his own centre circle that found Insigne in space once again on the left. Mertens covered 50 yards in a flash to put himself in position to meet his team-mate’s cross, only to tumble in the area and collect a yellow card for his trouble.

Milan were all at sea, but that state of affairs would not last. The hosts grabbed a goal back in the 37th minute, Juraj Kucka seizing on a moment of indecision from Napoli playing the ball out of defence. He pinched the ball off Lorenzo Tonelli and sprinted through to prod it past Pepe Reina.

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The balance of the match shifted. Napoli lost their grip on the play, finishing up with their lowest share of possession (43.1%) all season, but not the result – digging in to seal a 2-1 win. For Sarri, this was a cause for satisfaction. “We showed we knew how to win whilst suffering,” he said. “It’s the first time that’s happened since I’ve been here, so I’m happy.”

Inevitably, many of the journalists present at his post-match press conference were already looking ahead. Milik had rejoined first-team training a few days earlier, and Pavoletti was gaining fitness after arriving with an injury of his own. Would it soon be time to move Mertens back out to the wing?

“Once I have Pavoletti and Milik at the right condition, I will confront this question,” said Sarri. “But certain considerations don’t seem like a problem to me. I worry about everything except having different players to choose between.”

Even Maradona would afford him the benefit of the doubt at this stage. The Argentinian openly criticised Sarri early last season, saying that this was not the right man to open a new winning cycle at the club. Last week, and not for the first time, he admitted: “I was wrong”.

So were many others about Napoli’s capacity to win without Milik. The Partenopei finished the weekend in third, four points behind the league leaders Juventus (who do, admittedly, still have a game in hand). A title challenge is not out of the question.

Ask around town, though, and you might find that the locals are even more excited by the imminent resumption of Champions League football. These ‘marvellous Smurfs’ have been waiting a long time for their opportunity to try to take down some giants from Madrid.

Talking points

• Defeat means Milan have now taken just five points from their last five games, but they did get some better news with Gerard Deulofeu arriving to complete his move to the club. Not all Everton fans will be sad to see him go after some lacklustre performances this season, but then there was plenty of scorn for Suso on Merseyside as well, and he – despite a dry run in front of goal – has thrived so far in Italy.

• Juventus needed a response after their defeat at Fiorentina and, my, did Massimiliano Allegri deliver one, sending out the boldest lineup of his time at the club, with Gonzalo Higuaín, Paulo Dybala, Mario Mandzukic, Miralem Pjanic and Juan Cuadrado all included from the start in a 4-2-3-1. This was a team built to attack – an antidote to the timidity that the champions showed in the Stadio Artemio Franchi – and it delivered with two goals inside the first 17 minutes. Although Juventus didn’t score again after that, they never risked letting Lazio back into the game either. For those keeping track, that’s now 27 consecutive home wins for the Bianconeri. They have scored 64 goals in that run, and conceded just nine.

• Inter are not quite in the same ballpark just yet, but their resurgence under Stefano Pioli was extended with a 1-0 win away to Palermo. The game was turgid, but six consecutive league victories (eight in all competitions) are nothing to be sniffed at, and especially when you have kept clean sheets in four of those.

• Likewise Roma laboured against Cagliari, but came away with a 1-0 victory that extends their own home winning streak to 13 matches in Serie A. Edin Dzeko grabbed the only goal of the day, showing exactly the sort of physicality you would want from your No9 (I can’t abide claims that he was fouling Nicola Murru, who was quite plainly trying to impede Dzeko himself with an arm) and finishing well. He remains one behind Mauro Icardi in the scoring charts, on 14 goals.

• Random but illuminating (I think) statistic of the week, pinched from Opta. By fielding 17-year-olds Filippo Melegoni and Alessandro Bastoni in their starting XI on Sunday, Atalanta became the first team in any of Europe’s top five leagues to feature more than one player born after the start of 1999. And they won, too, beating Sampdoria 1-0.

• Is the relegation battle already done? Losses for Palermo and Pescara, together with a draw for Crotone, mean that the gap from 17th to 18th place already stands at 11 points. Which, all told, isn’t an insurmountable gap with 17 matches left to play, but starts to look like it when you see how these teams are actually playing. Pescara set a new record this weekend for most Serie A home games (19) without a victory – a stretch dating back to their last stay in the top-flight, in 2012-13.

Results: Chievo 0-3 Fiorentina, Milan 1-2 Napoli, Juventus 2-0 Lazio, Bologna 2-0, Empoli 1-0 Udinese, Atalanta 1-0 Sampdoria, Palermo 0-1 Internazionale, Pescara 1-3 Sassuolo, Genoa 2-2 Crotone, Roma 1-0 Cagliari.