As England successfully defended their European title in July, Chloe Kelly made a beeline for the nearest TV camera.

“The first time was so nice, we had to do it twice,” the Lionesses heroine said, summing up her team’s spirit in one neat line.

Antonio Conte and Napoli are drawing from the same philosophical well after signing Rasmus Hojlund from Manchester United.

The Dane joined the Serie A champions on loan with a conditional obligation to make the transfer permanent for €44million (£38m) next summer if Napoli qualify for the Champions League.

With Romelu Lukaku ruled out for three months the Partenopei had to bolster their attacking options.

That need was exacerbated by the fact Napoli’s three goals in their first two Serie A matches were scored by midfielders, with Scott McTominay and Kevin De Bruyne on target against Sassuolo and Andre-Frank Zambo Anguissa netting the winner against Cagliari.

A summer arrival from Udinese for a €9m loan fee, Lorenzo Lucca was never intended to be Napoli’s main attacking weapon this season, but has found himself parachuted in the role following Lukaku’s injury.

The 24-year-old Lucca, whose deal contains a conditional obligation to buy, is yet to open his account and will need time to develop.

Seen through that lens, Hojlund’s arrival is a perfectly logical move for Napoli, who will be competing on three fronts this season.

There is also an element of future-proofing about the signing, with the Denmark international 10 years younger than Lukaku, who will turn 33 at the end of the season.

But the most intriguing aspect of Hojlund’s move to Serie A is arguably the club he left behind.

United have become a paragon of dysfunctionality, a giant in name only, existing in its own biosphere of mismanagement, neglect and ineptitude.

And yet, their cast-offs have found a new lease of life in Serie A.

Lukaku won the Scudetto in his second season with Inter Milan after joining in the summer of 2019. The team also contained Matteo Darmian, who won a second Serie A title in 2024 along with Henrikh Mkhitaryan, another former United player.

David De Gea has been a solid performer with Fiorentina, much as Chris Smalling was at Roma before him.

Their impact, however, pales in comparison with McTominay’s.

The Scotsman was named Serie A MVP following a stunning debut campaign which delivered Napoli’s second Scudetto in three years and consecrated him as a city’s cult hero.

With 12 goals, including that finish as the Partenopei sealed the title on the final day of the season, McTominay was the Azzurri’s second-most prolific scorer behind Lukaku.

And he has carried on where he left off, scoring the opener as Napoli beat Sassuolo on the first weekend of the season. McFratm hasn’t just repaid Napoli’s €30m investment, he has become a pillar of Conte’s team.

The parallels with Hojlund are impossible to ignore. Neither player was a regular at United and both came to symbolise the club’s decline. It was and is an unjust reputation. Like many of their team-mates, they seemingly sank without trace at a club where football has long been an afterthought.

McTominay’s superb debut campaign for Napoli divided opinion in England. Did United allow a brilliant player to leave? Did the Scotsman simply make the most of the circumstances in what some perceive to be an easier division to master than the Premier League?

More to the point, can lightning strike twice now and can Conte turn Hojlund into the striker United thought they were getting when they shelled out €75m to sign him from Atalanta in the summer of 2023?

A more pertinent question perhaps should be, what striker did United think they were getting to begin with?

The Dane had scored just 10 goals in 34 games in all competitions in his only season for La Dea before moving to the Premier League.

A degree of nuance is required here, for both McTominay and Hojlund. The Scot has thrived under Conte, but plays in a different system than he did at United, where Jose Mourinho, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Erik ten Hag deployed him predominantly as a defensive midfielder.

In his final season at United, McTominay scored 10 goals in all competitions, a sign he did not discover his shooting boots at the feet of Mount Vesuvius.

Hojlund, meanwhile, scored just 10 in 52 appearances in all competitions last term, finding the net just four times in 32 Premier League games.

According to data from SofaScore, the Dane’s goal return underperformed his 5.6xG and he missed six big chances. More worryingly, he took just 1.0 shots per game, an astonishingly low figure for a striker. By comparison, Lukaku took 1.78 shots per game, Marcus Thuram and Mateo Retegui 2.03 and 2.78 respectively and trigger-happy Moise Kean let fly an average of 3.28 times per Serie A match last season.

The new Napoli striker touched the ball in the opposing penalty box just 2.56 times per 90 in the Premier League last term, almost half of the figures recorded by Thuram and Retegui. Lukaku and Kean also comfortably exceeded the Dane’s benchmark.

Unsurprisingly, at 12.5%, Hojlund’s conversion rate was by far the worst of the quintet too, as was his big chance conversion rate. For once, the cold, hard data was corroborated by the naked eye as Hojlund’s confidence looked shot to pieces.

He fared slightly better in the Europa League, scoring six goals in 15 appearances, marginally exceeding his 5.4xG.

His performances convinced United to move on from him in the summer, as they agreed a deal worth up to €85m to sign Benjamin Sesko from RB Leipzig.

It was a bitter blow for Hojlund, who grew up supporting the club and had vowed to fight for his place in pre-season.

“My plan is very clear and that is for me to stay and fight for my spot,” he told reporters after scoring twice against Bournemouth in pre-season in Chicago.

United eventually took the decision out of his hands, privately accepting he would never justify the fee Atalanta received in 2023.

According to The Athletic, Hojlund was heartbroken by the development and made clear it was not his desire to leave.

His first social media post following his arrival in Naples struck the same tone.

“Good thing I like pizza,” he wrote on Instagram along with a picture of him wearing Napoli colours.

It was hardly stirring stuff.

But if Hojlund buys into Conte’s project as McTominay did and starts scoring goals, he may soon have a pizza named in his honour.