Sawt Falasteen - Napoli's agonising wait for Scudetto put on ice

With waving flags, billowing banners, and streets packed with giddy, celebrating fans, Naples was primed on Sunday to celebrate its team's third Serie A title, 33 years after its last championship.

But now fans will have to wait some more.

The 1-1 draw to end the Napoli-Salernitana match Sunday tore an anticipated victory from the hands of the home team's fans, who came out in blue-clad force to celebrate their team but left empty-handed -- for now.

"Winning at home would have been a wonderful gift to the city, but it didn't turn out that way," fan Stefano Verdo, 25, adorned in the ubiquitous blue and white colours of Napoli, told AFP following the match.

"But we're not disappointed, we're calm, we'll party another day."

Despite the draw, and an array of glum faces leaving the Stadio Maradona, some fans continued to blow horns and whistles, wave flags and chant, as they had done earlier in the day when the title seemed imminent.

After second-place Lazio lost to Inter Milan in Sunday's early kick-off, bringing Napoli one step closer to the championship, fans went wild, setting off a wave of enthusiastic cheering, blaring horns and cries of joy as the city's blue-tinged Scudetto delirium reached frenzied heights.

Napoli fans have been obsessed for months by the real possibility of wresting the Scudetto from the hands of the big clubs in Italy's rich north and bringing it back to their unruly Southern city -- battered and beset with problems but passionately devoted to its team.

"I'm not sad, the victory has only been postponed a little," said bartender Riccardo Cappi, 37, outside the city's historic Gambrinus cafe. "It changes little."

- 'Scudetto is ours' -

As for 46-year-old fan Rita Ambrosina, who traveled from the suburbs with her extended family, the party had just begun.

'We are celebrating today, because in any case the Scudetto is ours," said Ambrosina, who remembered Napoli's last championship in 1990.

"I remember the city celebrating, it was an unforgettable emotion," she said. "The problems of Naples will be forgotten, at least for a day."

Napoli's last Serie A title was won on April 29, 1990, in the heady days when Maradona wore Napoli's blue and brought glory to the grateful city that considers the Argentine striker nearly divine and whose stadium now bears his name.

Maradona -- who died in 2020 -- led the team three years earlier to the first Scudetto in its history, on May 10, 1987.

Shopkeeper Carla Campanile, wearing a white and blue striped jokers hat adorned with bells, said Napoli's victory would be especially emotional given that it would come so shortly after Maradona's death.

"He's our god, he protects us, and it's thanks to him that we win."

- Blue smoke and banners -

Along Naples' long seaside promenade, the air was thick with the smell of flares that emitted billowing clouds of blue smoke.

Within the colonnaded Piazza del Plebiscito in the heart of the city, thousands of fans had gathered in anticipation of victory, waving flags bearing Napoli's colours or Maradona's face.

Blue-clad fans filled the streets even hours ahead of the game -- some with blue hair, blue crowns or Maradona wigs -- singing, chanting and parading with banners, flares and toy horns, as incessant honking from mopeds and cars added to the joyful tumult.

A ban against firecrackers appeared to have gone mostly unheeded in the celebrations that filled the city centre, which was closed to traffic.

Meanwhile, national park authorities at Mount Vesuvius, which looms over Naples, said Friday that they would take security precautions after being warned of fans planning to set off tri-color flares at its crater.

H.Nasr--SF-PST