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Football: The Frenchman’s appointment this summer was a perplexing one to begin. Napoli had just won their first Serie A title in 33 years, and most people expected them to either name a proven winner or an up-and-coming young coach to succeed Luciano Spalletti. Instead, they went with one whose only major silverware was claimed at Marseille more than a decade ago.

De Laurentiis further undermined the appointment by acknowledging in interviews that Garcia was not his first choice. “I interviewed Thiago Motta,” he said last month. “But he didn’t want to risk taking the place of a manager who achieved everything [Spalletti] achieved. I called Luis Enrique, but luckily for us he went to France instead – look at the results he’s getting.”

There were, according to De Laurentiis, “many others”. To hear him talk was to wonder if Napoli had settled on Garcia almost by chance. The only criteria clearly stated by De Laurentiis at the time was that he wanted a manager comfortable working with a 4-3-3.

For the first time this season, Garcia abandoned that formation on Sunday, trying out a new 4-2-3-1. The idea was to find a shape that would allow him to deploy Giacomo Raspadori behind Giovanni Simeone in the center of the attack – spreading the goalscoring burden for a team that has had to do without the injured Victor Osimhen since the middle of last month.