Napoli announce U.S. Latina Calcio friendly

With a two-week gap between Napoli's friendly against Porto and the start of the Serie A season, it was always likely that Napoli would play another small friendly to keep the team tuned up and ready to go. Now that friendly has been announced: on Friday, August 14th, Napoli will play U.S. Latina Calcio in their sixth and final friendly of the pre-season.

The match was announced via a short and sweet post on Napoli's official site, along with word that the match will be broadcast on Italia 1, a commercial TV network as opposed to the usual pay-per-view options Italian fans have to deal with.

Latina are a Serie B side, finishing 13th last season in their second Serie B campaign. Italy's second division is the highest the side as ever been, having gone through financial difficulties several times since being founded in 1945, having to be re-formed as a club three times in the last 20 years, most recently in 2009. They've only won one relatively major trophy, coming out as Copa Italia Lega Pro champions in 2013, winning the secondary Italian Cup competition held among the teams in the third tier of Italian football.

We'll likely see longer run-outs for a few players who have been limited in pre-season by injury or late returns from international duty, such as Marek Hamsik, Gonzalo Higuain, and Pepe Reina. Outside of them, it's hard to say what we'll get -- it could be an extended look at Maurizio Sarri's first-choice side, or it could be mostly time for him to look at his backups and experiment with what they can do.

Regardless, it'll be good to see Napoli play one more match to fine-tune things before the season starts. Time to start building momentum for what will hopefully be a strong Serie A campaign.