Napoli set to name Cristiano Giuntoli as sporting director

Just days after Riccardo Bigon officially resigned as the sporting director of Napoli, club president Aurelio De Laurentiis is apparently set to name his replacement: current Carpi sporting director Cristiano Giuntoli.

You're probably wondering what a Carpi is right now and who the heck Giuntoli is, and that's fair. A few years ago, Carpi were a fairly insignificant side in Italy, bouncing around the lower divisions with a tiny stadium and no real budget to do more. Then Giuntoli showed up, saw what he had to work with, and made a few smart hiring and transfer decisions that catapulted them up the ranks, showing up in Serie B two years ago and winning Italy's second division outright this past season to earn their first ever place in Serie A.

Carpi still had a shoestring budget and a tiny stadium the whole time, but Giuntoli worked some absolute magic to get them this far. With Napoli something of a big-club equivalent of Carpi on the European scale, this seems like a decent experiment to try out. If Giuntoli can bring similar successes with a larger budget -- but still small compared to what some of his peers in England or Spain or Germany are working with -- then Napoli could do great things.

An official announcement is still forthcoming, like with new manager Maurizio Sarri, but this looks like a deal that's all but wrapped up at this point. Hopefully Giuntoli does great things in Naples. Bigon left him some awfully big shoes to fill.