Napoli, Allegri secures the three points: "We're not at our best yet."

It wasn't a walk in the park, and Max Allegri made it clear, bluntly, immediately after the match on TV. The start of the season, as is tradition in August, brings with it toxins, a load of work still to be worked off, and that dose of curiosity mixed with inevitable rust.

For a good half hour, De Rossi's Genoa pushed hard on the accelerator, severely testing the Azzurri's ball-at-the-foot attacks, guilty of a few too many technical errors in the build-up phase.

The ace in the hole and the champion's law

The one who broke the deadlock was Kevin De Bruyne, a man whose job it is to create trajectories where others see only a wall of opposing shirts. The Belgian star's play cleared the way for Napoli and loosened up his teammates' muscles.

Allegri praised his crystal-clear class, calling him a player in another league, capable of creating decisive strikes out of nowhere. A gem in an orderly but still uneventful match, where the team had to take things slowly, managing the pace rather than rushing the play.

Substitutions, fitness and focus on the Champions League

Between a veiled joke about the controversial contact from the Genoa bench—refused with his trademark irony—and a candid analysis of the team's current form, the Italian coach charts the course. With a month and a half of work behind him, getting to know the squad is still a work in progress, and physical brilliance will only arrive in a couple of weeks, just in time for the start of the European group stage. For now, order, defensive solidity, and three golden points earned on their debut are enough to get the race off to a good start.