Napoli’s official X account posted a picture of a man standing before a statue of Diego Maradona.

He was short, with black hair and sunglasses, his face framed with a grey beard that makes him appear slightly older than his years.

If you didn’t know any better, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were looking at a younger, more slimline version of the great movie director Francis Ford Coppola.

But it wasn’t the creative genius behind The Godfather trilogy, The Conversation or Apocalypse Now. It was Ezequiel Lavezzi.

The former Napoli star was at the Stadio Diego Maradona for a legends’ night. In the lead up to the Partenopei’s titanic clash with AC Milan, Lavezzi, along with Antonio Careca and Alemao, were honoured by the club.

All three were guests for the evening, which ended in a vital 2-1 win for Napoli that kept up the pressure at the top of the table.

Goals from Matteo Politano and Romelu Lukaku ensured the gap to leaders Inter Milan remained three points with eight games left.

So perhaps for the younger reader who didn’t get to experience any of the trio in their prime. Here’s what the big deal was.

Antonio Careca

In the summer of 1987 Napoli had just won their first Scudetto. They were led by Maradona but he and club president Corrado Ferlaino knew a better supporting cast had to be assembled if they were to retain the title in the world’s strongest league.

Getting to the top of the mountain is easy, staying there is the hard bit.

In the title-winning season, Maradona was Napoli’s top scorer in Serie A with 10 while Andrea Carnevale and Bruno Giordano chipped in with 13 between them. But they wanted more.

To make Napoli slightly less dependent on their Argentinian talisman, Antonio Careca was signed from Brazilian side Sao Paulo to form part of the Ma-Gi-Ca frontline with Maradona and Giordano. 

Careca and Maradona met at an award show in Paris in late 1986. Maradona was receiving the Adidas Golden Ball and according to Careca, the Argentine sweet-talked him into joining him at Napoli. When Real Madrid came calling in the summer of 1987, he rejected them for Napoli.

The Neapolitans took him to their hearts. One of the most underrated Brazilian strikers in recent history, he hit 18 goals in his first season in all competitions.

Quick, technically gifted and bullish despite not possessing a big physique, Careca slotted perfectly into the Napoli team, and Maradona loved playing alongside him.

“When my dad spoke of Careca, his eyes would go big. He had a lot of team-mates, and he loved them all, but with Antonio there was something special,” said Diego Maradona Jnr recently.

Despite scoring nearly a century of goals for Napoli, with his second season being his most productive with 27, Careca was always overshadowed by Maradona. 

Yet that didn’t bother him. Seventy-three Serie A goals in six years, with the 1989 UEFA Cup and 1990 Scudetto added in, meant his time in Italy was worth it. He could’ve won more in Madrid, but then he wouldn’t have played with ‘brother’.

Alemao

With Napoli’s title defence collapsing in spectacular style in the spring of 1988, the team needed more steel behind Maradona. Fernando De Napoli was a hard operator, but he needed help. 

Moreover, Salvatore Bagni had been sold in the aftermath of the collapse, as he was one of the players who took part in the revolt against manager Ottavio Bianchi and his method of coaching.

With Bagni excommunicated, the midfield needed a replacement. The ideal man came in the shape of Alemao.

The Brazilian, nicknamed Alemao (the German) due to his blond hair and light complexion, added dynamism and defensive legwork to the Napoli midfield. 

In the three-foreigners-per-team era, Napoli had a very South American flavour, with two Brazilians and an Argentine. 

Alemao, like Careca before him, hit the ground running. 

In his first season he won the 1989 UEFA Cup, scoring a crucial goal in the second leg of the final against Stuttgart. 

A hard worker with energy to burn while sporting a classic 1980s moustache-and-perm combo, Alemao stayed at Napoli for four years, becoming the midfield lynchpin in the final years of the Maradona era.

Alemao is perhaps best associated with the infamous game away to Atalanta in April 1990, when he was hit on the head with a coin thrown from the stands.

Napoli were drawing in Bergamo with only 15 minutes left, and Alemao was told to stay down. Napoli were then handed a 2-0 forfeit due to the incident and went joint-top of the table.

Milan buckled in the final weeks of the season and Napoli went on to win a second title in three years. It was Alemao’s only Scudetto, but he played a pivotal role in it. 

After 113 appearances and 14 goals in all competitions, he left Napoli in the summer of 1992, for Atalanta.

In a time when Serie A signed only the best players, Alemao was among the greatest midfielders in the league.

Both Careca and Alemao posed in front of the statue with Maradona, a throwback to the photo of the three in a pre-season retreat in the summer of 1988, an era when Napoli was the epicentre of the football world.

Ezequiel Lavezzi

Napoli have had Argentines after Maradona, but none have been as successful as Ezequiel Lavezzi.

Signed in the summer of 2007 after gaining promotion to Serie A, Lavezzi went down as one of the most-astute buys of the Aurelio De Laurentiis era.

Signed for €6m, “El Pocho” – the Chubby One – was never an out-and-out goalscorer, but possessed an electric turn of pace, dribbling wizardry and technical ingenuity. 

He arrived the same summer as Marek Hamsik, and the pair would go on to define a period of the club’s history. 

With the Partenopei back in Serie A for the first time since 2001, Lavezzi was the standout star in the early years of the De Laurentiis era. His goals and dazzling skills kept Neapolitans entertained in the early years back in the top flight.

The addition of Edinson Cavani in 2010 saw the ‘Three Tenors’ form, and the club really took off. The Coppa Italia was won under Walter Mazzarri and Champions League football was secured for the first time since its 1992 rebrand.

A measure of Lavezzi’s unpredictability is in his famous backside goal against Milan in October 2010. 

Two down at home, Hugo Campagnaro launched a ball in behind the Milan back line for Lavezzi to give chase.

In a race with Sokratis Papastathopoulos, Lavezzi sprinted into the box along with the Greek defender.

The Argentine fell over the Milan right-back but the ball continued moving closer to the goal. Cavani and Alessandro Nesta gave chase but the Uruguayan’s presence put the usually calm Nesta off, who somehow ran past it.

The ball landed at the feet of Lavezzi, now firmly on the floor. Christian Abbiati came off his line to gather it, but Lavezzi, thinking at lightning speed, got up off the floor while also scooping the ball over the keeper and into the net, kissing the crossbar on the way in.

It was an extraordinary piece of magic. Milan ultimately held on for the win, but it showed the brilliance of Lavezzi.

He left the club after five years following the Coppa Italia victory in 2012. Paris Saint-Germain offered a much higher salary, and while he was more successful in the French capital, Lavezzi did not receive the kind of adulation he’d been used to in Naples.

Such was his affection for Napoli that Lavezzi revealed in a 2021 interview that he rejected several offers from Italian clubs before leaving for China in 2016 out of respect for Napoli.

“I would never have gone to Juventus or Inter,” he said. “I’ll never be Neapolitan, but I had the respect of the city.”

You most certainly did, Pocho.