In a country full of football rivalries, there is no game that personifies the word hatred quite like Napoli vs Juventus.

The hatred isn’t exactly a two-way street. Napoli have a hatred for Juve so intense that should any player make the decision to move directly from south to north, it’s seen as the cardinal sin.

It’s why you see posters of Gonzalo Higuain in a toilet, it’s why you see toilet paper for sale with the Bianconeri’s logo, it’s why you won’t find a single piece of Juventus merchandise in the city. 

And should one decide to wear Juve colours in Naples, they might not make it out in one piece.

While there is some sort of hatred towards Roma, Inter and Milan, the latter two being northern aristocrats, Juve are the enemy – the one fixture Neapolitans look forward to more than any other.

To Napolitani, Turin and the Piedmontese are stereotyped to be everything they aren’t: powerful, cold, aloof, keeping their emotions in check, possessing an air of snobbishness. In a nutshell, northern. Yet the truth is somewhere in the middle.

“A lot of people can say that people from Torino are boring and very different from us, but the truth is there are a lot of generations of people from Turin with southern Italian roots,” says Alessandro Tione, a born and bred Neapolitan.

“I have friends from Turin but they all have parents from the south: one from Calabria, one from Sicily, one from Napoli. It’s difficult to generalise.” It’s perhaps why finding a true Torinese is more difficult these days, with characteristics diluted over the decades.

When northern Italy went through it’s economic boom in the 1950s and 1960s, Turin was the epicentre, with Fiat securing jobs for thousands of southern Italian workers. This is why Juve are more supported outside of Turin, with Torino being the team of the Torinese.

The rivalry between the two clubs, and the two cities, ties into the north-south divide. Naturally, this bled into calcio.

Ask any Napoli fan and they’d likely say they’d swap the 2023 Scudetto for the one lost against Juve in 2018. The 2017-18 side were arguably at the peak of Maurizio Sarri’s reign, playing spellbinding football that won neutrals across the world.

The turning point came in a single weekend in late April. Juve came from 2-1 down to beat Inter 3-2 in the Derby d’Italia. Napoli saw the result in a Florence hotel, and promptly capitulated the next day to Fiorentina, losing 3-0 which killed their title chances.

Napoli went into that weekend just a point behind Juve, but the manner of that comeback crushed spirits. Juve won the Scudetto for a seventh consecutive year, and Sarri left that summer for Chelsea. 

It took another five years for Napoli to banish the ghost of Diego Maradona and, as great as the 2023 Scudetto was, the one lost under Sarri would’ve been the title. Winning the Scudetto is one thing, but beating Juve to it is quite another. Levels.

The Napoli-Juve rivalry has now taken on another element, with the presence of one Antonio Conte in the Neapolitan hot-seat.

There is no figure in Juve’s recent history that personifies what Juve represent more than Conte. A serial winner who values winning, graft and putting in a shift above all else. 

While not the sole reason, Conte played a massive part in Juve’s re-emergence at the beginning of the 2010s, guiding the club to three Scudetti back-to-back. This was something even the likes of Marcello Lippi or Giovanni Trapattoni failed to achieve.

Juve had moulded Conte as a player during his 13-year stint in Turin, and the Lecce-native had returned to repay the favour. The Old Lady had lost sight of what she used to be, and Conte restored it. Then he left.

Ten years on from his hasty departure, Conte has always appeared a man in search of a way home. Yet the door has never been open for him, even after the departure of Andrea Agnelli as club president, a man who felt betrayed by his walking out in the summer of 2014.

Yet Conte believes he’s matured since then. “Obviously I try to be better than in the past,” he said in his pre-game press conference. “We have a duty to grow. Now I feel like a much more complete, evolved person.”

Conte has, like he did in his first campaign at Juve in 2011-12, restored pride in Naples following a horrendous title defence last season. Going into the game, Napoli sit some 13 points ahead of their great rivals and are coming off the back of a scintillating 3-2 win against Atalanta in Bergamo.

The way Napoli came back to win in Bergamo demonstrated the work Conte’s done in just six months. Pegged back twice by Atalanta and in front of a vocierous home crowd, Conte didn’t panic, and urged his players to stick to the game plan.

Eventually, Atalanta ran out of ideas and Romelu Lukaku’s header 12 minutes from time ensured a vital victory in the title race. Cue manic scenes at Naples’ Capodichino airport, when hundreds of Partenopei fans met the team upon arrival from Bergamo in the dead of night.

The victory was a statement of intent from Napoli, made all the more impressive considering Kvincha Kvaratskhelia’s departure had overshadowed preparation leading into the match.

Napoli are seeking a replacement for the Georgian, with links to Alejandro Garnacho and Borussia Dortmund’s Karim Adeyemi ongoing.

Yet with no European football this season, Conte still has a good enough squad to win the title even without any new additions. “I would go to war with these lads,” he said this week.

Napoli’s brand of football this season isn’t pretty to watch. There are no elements of Sarrisimo or Luciano Spalletti, those days are long gone. What’s present is a team with a tactical plan, grinta and players who can make the difference when needed. 

Like in his first season at Juve and Chelsea, Conte has tinkered his system to maximise the squad. Napoli’s 4-3-3 isn’t Conte’s ideal setup, but it could be the one to fire the club to a second Scudetto in three years.

Despite his Juve legacy, Conte has endeared himself to the Napoli faithful. Given a megaphone as the team bus was about to depart Naples airport after the Atalanta victory, the manager bellowed: “Forza Napoli!” to thunderous cheers.

Napoli against Juventus is never just an ordinary game. The atmosphere inside the Stadio Diego Maradona will contain enough raw energy to power Naples twice over, and consigning Juve to their first domestic defeat of the season would elevate Conte’s standing further. 

Moreover, Napoli have won the last five home games against Juve by a combined score of 12-4, with the Bianconeri’s last win in Naples coming nearly six years ago. And Conte, ever the professional, won’t let his heart overrule his head.