• Stanislav Lobotka joined Napoli from Celta Vigo in January 2020

• The Slovak has made 86 appearances for the Partenopei so far

• Lobotka was resigned to the bench until Luciano Spalletti molded him into a Regista

Akshat Mehrish Luciano Spalletti remains unheralded in his native Italy. The Florence-born tactician has reigned over some of Italy’s grandest clubs — Udinese, Roma, Inter Milan, and Napoli — but hasn’t yet won the league title at home. His victories came abroad, in Russia, and were celebrated with much less zest back in Tuscany than in Saint Petersburg. Spalletti, however, is a craftsman. Born of the same Tuscan blood as the great renaissance sculptor Michelangelo, the Italian is at his best when creating. Carving systems that highlight individuals or shaping the individuals themselves. The tactician breathed new life into Francesco Totti, deploying him as a ‘False 9’ while at Roma; he moved Marcelo Brozovic back ten yards, gifting Inter a remarkably talented orchestrator. His latest project is Stanislav Lobotka, whom he pulled from the rusty benches of the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona and sculpted into the heartbeat of his exciting new Napoli team.

Spalletti’s Napoli are dominant on the ball. Control and chaos are the agents behind their success so far; they averaged the highest possession (60), most passes attempted, most passes completed, and the highest successful passing percentage of any team, but did not shy away from relying on the individual brilliance of Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Victor Osimhem to cause disarray within the opposition defense. Heading into the FIFA World Cup 2022 break, they led the league by eight points, ahead of reigning champions AC Milan.

While Kvaratskhelia and Osimhen are the agents of chaos, Stanislav Lobotka, at the base of the midfield, represents control. The Slovak is a conductor, always showing up for the ball, using his diminutive-yet-stocky frame to spin away from his marker, and spraying passes all over the pitch with incredible accuracy. Watching him master the spaces around him, with and without the ball, one might be forgiven to think that Lobotka wasn’t born in Trencin, Slovakia, but nearly 2000 kilometers away in Barcelona.

Yet, for all his talent, the midfielder was a secondary player for Napoli for most of his Neapolitan stint. Having joined the club in January 2020 from Celta Vigo on the recommendation of the legendary Marek Hamsik, Lobotka failed to make an impression on the then-head coach Gennaro Gattuso, whose system preferred combative midfielders in the center of the park over creative ones. The Slovakia international made 16 appearances in his first half-season at the club and 23 in his second and was well on his way out when Luciano Spalletti arrived. Spalletti initially preferred Spaniard Fabian Ruiz over Lobotka, but Ruiz’s departure to Paris Saint-Germain in the summer of 2022 opened up a spot at the base of the midfield, and the Slovak grabbed it with both hands. Midway through the 2022-23 season, Lobotka has become undroppable for Napoli. At the time of writing, he has played 21 games for the Italian club, starting 19, and amassing over 1,700 minutes; he has one goal and one assist to his name in that time, but his role is not that of a creator at the end of the pitch but an orchestrator in the middle of it.

Napoli lead the league at the time of writing and are through to the round-of-16 of the UEFA Champions League — runs like that don’t often go unnoticed. When the big clubs come calling for their players, and they will, Lobotka’s name will be high on the list; rumors of late indicate that the Slovak is already turning heads abroad. One wonders then, where lies the future of Spalletti’s latest sculpture — will he remain affixed on the pitch of the Diego Armando Maradona, like his compatriot Marek Hamsik before him, or will he adorn the gardens of palaces much grander than those of Napoli?