Player Focus: Benítez's Faith in Callejón Repaid

When Napoli director of sport Riccardo Bigon travelled to West Kirby over the summer to visit Rafa Benítez at his home with a view to discussing transfer strategy, he had a number of targets that he wanted to run by the club’s new manager.

One of these was apparently Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, the lightening quick Saint-Étienne striker who, in addition to being able to run 100m in 10.3 seconds, scores plenty of goals too. He got 19 in Ligue 1 last season.

Taking into account Napoli’s plans to transition from a 3-5-2 to a 4-2-3-1, Bigon was of the opinion that the Gabon international, a former member of Milan’s academy, would be ideal for a position either on the right or the left of the team’s attack.

Benítez, however, had someone else in mind for the role. That someone was Real Madrid’s José Maria Callejón. His name certainly wasn’t as hip as Aubameyang’s and when Napoli signed him for €9.5m there was little conviction that the fee represented money well spent.

Noticing how awash with cash the Serie A runners’ up were after the sale of Edinson Cavani to Paris Saint-Germain some claimed that Real were taking advantage by charging high prices for players - including another arrival from the Bernabéu, Raul Albiol - who were deemed surplus to requirements.

But Benítez was sure of both recruits. Trust me on this, Riccardo, he presumably said. Indeed, so confident was Benítez in Callejón that he gave the player Cavani’s No.7 shirt. “He has the movement of a striker,” he told La Gazzetta dello Sport. “He can get to 20 goals.”

Not everyone shared his optimism. Callejón scored only three times in La Liga last season. But he’s already got as many in Serie A. The 26-year-old has struck in each and every one of his opening three competitive appearances for Napoli.

Only five players in the club’s history - Antonio Vojak in 1931, Attila Sallustro in 1932, Giancarlo Vitali in 1954, Marek Hamsik in 2009 and Cavani in 2010 - have ever started a campaign as prolific as he has at the San Paolo. In short, Callejón has been a revelation.

Averaging a goal every 70.3 minutes, his ratio is only bettered in Serie A by his teammate Hamsik (42.8) and Inter striker Mauro Icardi (60). Of the 20 players to have scored more than once in the campionato thus far, only a defender, Atalanta’s Guglielmo Stendardo, to whom one imagines not many chances fall, has a higher conversion rate than Callejón’s, which stands at an impressive 50%.

Credit must go to Benítez for pushing Napoli to sign him. So the question is: what did he see in Callejón that others, particularly those outside of Spain, didn’t? Ask him and it revolves around one thing in particular: movement.

“He’s an important player for us because he has different movement from all the others,” Benítez explains. “He gives me an added possibility when the opponents become closed and don’t give us space.”

Callejón, it must be said, has a great instinct for goal and destabilising defences. While coming through Real’s academy, he used to play up front. The youth team he was in had so many good passers for their age from Dani Parejo and Pedro Mosquera to Alberto Bueno and Callejón’s brother Juanmi that he played as a No.9, often giving the ball to them and making a run knowing that they’d find him. In hindsight, it seems that it was probably the quality of Callejón’s off-the-ball work rather than what they actually did on it that made him so easy to find.

Five years ago he was signed by Espanyol after a season in which he had scored 21 goals in 36 games for Castilla. Coach Manuel Pochettino used him out-wide and from there he’d make a name for himself. “The diagonal runs he makes behind the defence are his most outstanding technical quality,” reflected former teammate Rufete.

Play a ball between the full-back and centre-back into the tightest of spaces and Callejón doesn’t only get there but he also times everything so right that he still has the presence of mind to finish. “In this, he reminds me of David Villa,” his former youth team coach Juan Carlos Mandía said.

Considering how so much of Callejón’s work is done off the ball which, incidentally, also includes the defensive phase - he made four tackles, four interceptions and three clearances in between scoring and hitting the woodwork against Bologna - it doesn’t come as a surprise to learn he has only created two chances for his teammates (eight Napoli players have created more) and he’s yet to complete a single dribble. The emphasis in his game is on finishing moves rather than starting them. What he creates is uncertainty in opposition defences.  

Tonight at the San Paolo in the Champions League he’ll face off against Dortmund and their summer signing, the excellent Aubameyang, who Napoli apparently passed up. It’s a competition Callejón has a remarkable record in. He has scored seven in his last nine appearances in the tournament. Given the form he’s in - the Andalucian is on a streak of five goals in five games if you include his last two showings for Real - you’d expect him to pose quite the threat to last year’s finalists.

Not in the starting line up for Saturday’s 2-0 win against Atalanta, he came off the bench and scored, a quality José Mourinho admired in him. “For some players, being on the bench and playing 10 minutes is a problem,” he said. “For him, playing 10 minutes is fantastic. For him every minute counts.” The possession of such an attitude was one of the reasons why he made no fewer than 56 appearances in La Liga for Real over the last two seasons.

Thinking he’d missed his chance at Real after his sale to Espanyol in 2008, Callejón was genuinely appreciative for another one at the Bernabéu even if competition for places was so high that he often didn’t start. As Mourinho alluded to in the above statement, it meant he always gave 100%.

Rotation strategy permitting, Callejón won’t be on the bench much at the San Paolo this season. He has already become untouchable at Napoli. Asked which transfer had brought him the most satisfaction this summer, president Aurelio De Laurentiis could have named another fellow signing from Real, Gonzalo Higuaín. He chose Callejón instead. “I’m very happy with him,” he said. Who wouldn’t be?