Napoli and Antonio Conte fall for the ‘Jolly’ charms of Scott McTominay

Scott McTominay will need to study Italian a while longer before he can understand all the lovely things being written about him in the nation’s newspapers, but if he were to thumb through the sports pages from the past few days he might pick out one familiar word. Journalists scrambling to define the Scotsman have referred to him repeatedly as Antonio Conte’s “Jolly”.

These are not remarks on the player’s outlook, though they could be. “My biggest dream as a person is to be happy,” said McTominay in an interview for Napoli’s in-house channels last month. “Happiness is the best thing in life, and that is the only thing I concentrate on: try to be happy, with my family, my friends, my girlfriend … when you have a smile on your face you play better at football as well.”

The Italian use of “Jolly” refers instead to the Joker in a deck of cards, a throwback to the “Jolly Joker” who appeared in packs imported from Britain two centuries ago. McTominay is being billed as Napoli’s wildcard: the guy whose versatility could upgrade a modest hand into a winning one.

Hyperbole? Perhaps, but McTominay has made a decisive impact so far. Signed from Manchester United for €30.5m at the end of the transfer window, he made his first start in a 0-0 draw with Juventus last month and scored his first Napoli goal during a Coppa Italia rout of Palermo five days later, finding the net within seconds of entering as a second-half substitute.

He has played the full 90 minutes of both Napoli’s league games since. After providing an assist – aided by the defender Andrea Carboni – for Khvicha Kvaratskhelia’s goal against Monza, McTominay opened the scoring himself in a 3-1 win over Como on Friday night.

The game had barely started when Giovanni Di Lorenzo angled a pass forward to Romelu Lukaku from the right flank. He held off a defender before keeping the ball moving inside to McTominay, who created space with his first touch then finished into the bottom left corner with his second. There were 25 seconds on the clock.

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McTominay ran to celebrate under the Curva, sharing the moment with fans he has described “some of the best I’ve ever seen and experienced”. On the sidelines, Conte clenched his fists and bellowed. Before the Monza game, he had told Dazn: “Scott is a player who has goals in his blood … a footballer who has goals in his DNA.”

It was no surprise to see the manager make Lukaku a transfer priority this summer, the pair having worked together so fruitfully at Inter, but McTominay was not far behind on his wishlist. When Conte lamented about how the failure to sell Victor Osimhen was “blocking” the club’s spending plans in late August, this was one of the main players on his mind.

Napoli have shifted their entire tactical setup to accommodate McTominay’s skillset. They began this season using a back three familiar to anyone who has followed Conte through his career, but swapped to a four-man defence against Juventus and have not looked back.

The detail of the team’s shape can shift according to the opponent and moment in a game. Some have called it a 4-3-3, while others see echoes of the 4-2-4 Conte favoured back when he was making his coaching breakthrough at Bari.

In practice, McTominay has occupied the left side of the pitch, sometimes playing box-to-box but regularly moving up to hold positions even higher than Lukaku at centre-forward. The Belgian, in turn, will often drop deep, Conte long having believed Lukaku is most effective when he can run at defenders with the ball at his feet. Kvaratskhelia and Matteo Politano occupy the wings.

After the draw against Juventus, Conte said the change of formation “was born from the arrivals of McTominay and [Billy] Gilmour, as well as the return of [Michael] Folorunsho [from a loan to Verona]. Before we only had two midfielders. Now we have a strong group to exploit.”

It is clear which of them was foremost in his thoughts. Where Gilmour and Folorunsho are yet to start a league game, McTominay already looks indispensable. His work ethic alone marks him out as Conte’s kind of player, having covered more distance in all three of his starts than anyone else on the pitch. The sample size is tiny, but Serie A’s official data puts him first in the league, averaging 11.91km per game.

He has done much more than just run. Among the most encouraging aspects of McTominay’s bright start is how quickly he has found understanding with his teammates Both of his goals arrived from Lukaku assists after he occupied spaces the centre-forward left open by moving away from the penalty box.

These are early days, for both the player and his team. Napoli, who began their campaign with a humbling 3-0 defeat to Verona, have bounced back so strongly they now sit top of the table heading into the international break. But they are yet to face many of Serie A’s strongest teams.

We will know more by mid-December, after they come through a seven-game stretch in which they face Milan, Atalanta, Inter, Roma, Torino and Lazio (once in the league and another time in the Coppa Italia). Still, it also bears remembering that this is a team that finished 10th in Serie A last season. To be in this position after seven games is already a big stride in the right direction.

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The performance against Como was far from flawless. Cesc Fàbregas’s newly-promoted side responded well after falling behind and had already struck the post through Nico Paz before Gabriel Strefezza equalised with a shot from outside the box just before half-time.

A Napoli victory hardly felt inevitable, but Sergi Roberto’s slow reactions and clumsy challenge on Mathías Olivera gifted them a penalty soon after the interval. Lukaku converted, before setting up another summer signing, David Neres, to seal the points late on.

“We’re obviously not thinking about nothing like that,” said McTominay when asked about being top of the table at full-time. “We’re just going to take it game by game … It’s great for us to win here but we’ve got a lot more work to do and a lot more steps to take.”

Having spoken about McTominay the previous week, Conte chose to highlight other players in his post-game remarks, praising Politano for how he had matured since they worked together at Inter, Neres for his impact off the bench and Lukaku, “who I always say can shift the balance of a game on his own.”

This team is still a work in progress. Napoli churned through three managers last season, and Conte’s first job was to restore a sense of stability. Yet they did spend close to €150m on new signings this summer, bringing in not only Lukaku, McTominay, Gilmour and Neres but the defenders Rafa Marín and Alessandro Buongiorno as well.

Conte was expected to make this team competitive again at the top of Serie A, just perhaps not quite so quickly. McTominay’s quick integration has been essential, a Scottish Jolly putting smiles on Neapolitan lips.