MILAN (AP) — Antonio Conte started the season apologizing to the Napoli fans. He is ending it with those same supporters chanting his name.
Napoli beat Cagliari 2-0 on Friday, in the final round of Serie A, to see the title return to the southern city. It finished one point above defending champion Inter Milan.
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Fans celebrate showing a number 4 during the Italian Serie A soccer match between Napoli and Cagliari at the Diego Maradona stadium in Naples, Italy, Friday, May 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Napoli's players celebrate after winning the Italian league soccer title at the end of the Italian Serie A soccer match between Napoli and Cagliari at the Diego Maradona stadium in Naples, Italy, Friday, May 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Napoli's Scott McTominay scores his side's first goal during the Italian Serie A soccer match between Napoli and Cagliari at the Diego Maradona stadium in Naples, Italy, Friday, May 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Players celebrate at the end of the Italian Serie A soccer match between Napoli and Cagliari at the Diego Maradona stadium in Naples, Italy, Friday, May 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
There was little sign of that happening at the start of the season.
Conte’s first league match in charge of Napoli was a dismal 3-0 loss to Hellas Verona in the opening round. So poor was his team that Conte said he was “ashamed” and his players had “melted like snow in the sun.”
It was clear he had a lot of work to do.
Conte became Napoli’s fifth coach in little more than a year and the scudetto celebrations of 2023 seemed a distant memory, especially after Napoli delivered on the worst title defenses in Serie A history the previous season, finishing 10th.
Here are the keys to Napoli’s success in the 2024-25 Italian league:
Conte is no stranger to lifting the Serie A trophy.
He started Juventus’ dominance of Italian soccer, brought the Serie A title to Inter Milan for the first time in more than a decade, and has now transformed Napoli from title has-been back to league champion.
Conte led Juventus to the first three of its nine successive Serie A titles, in each of his three seasons in charge from 2011-14, and he triumphed again in his second season at Inter, in 2021.
In between that, he also bagged a Premier League title with Chelsea in 2017.
The 55-year-old coach was tasked with rejuvenating a troubled Napoli side when he took over last summer. And that’s precisely what he did.
Conte shook things up and transformed the squad with his strict, no-nonsense attitude and attention to detail.
Luciano Spalletti’s superstars have departed and been replaced by Conte’s titans.
Gone is Victor Osimhen, the forward who fired Napoli to the title in 2023. Gone is the dribbling wizard Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, or “Kvaradona.” Gone is defensive stalwart Kim Min-jae.
Only five regular starters from Spalletti’s team remained prominent this season: Goalkeeper Alex Meret, captain Giovanni Di Lorenzo, defender Amir Rrahmani and midfielders Stanislav Lobotka and Frank Anguissa.
But the replacements have more than been up to the task.
Conte convinced Romelu Lukaku to rejoin him at Napoli after the pair won at Inter, and the Belgian striker has filled in well for Osimhen, with 14 goals and 10 assists in the league.
Perhaps the biggest revelation has been midfielder Scott McTominay, who joined in August after playing for Manchester United his entire career.
McTominay, who is described by his Napoli teammates as “a special guy,” has been the driving force behind Napoli’s surge past Inter. He and Lukaku both scored against Cagliari. McToninay ended the season with 12 Serie A goals and was named the Italian league player of the season.
Just over a month ago, Inter was very much on course for a treble of trophies.
It had just beaten Bayern Munich in the Champions League quarterfinals, had a three-point lead over Napoli in Serie A and was in the semifinals of the Italian Cup.
But the treble talk proved little more than a distraction and the fight on all three fronts too much as three straight losses — without scoring — saw Inter dumped out of the Italian Cup and slip behind Napoli.
Inter still has the Champions League final against Paris Saint-Germain to look forward to next week after an extraordinary semifinal against Barcelona, that saw 13 goals scored across two legs.
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Fans celebrate showing a number 4 during the Italian Serie A soccer match between Napoli and Cagliari at the Diego Maradona stadium in Naples, Italy, Friday, May 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Napoli's players celebrate after winning the Italian league soccer title at the end of the Italian Serie A soccer match between Napoli and Cagliari at the Diego Maradona stadium in Naples, Italy, Friday, May 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Napoli's Scott McTominay scores his side's first goal during the Italian Serie A soccer match between Napoli and Cagliari at the Diego Maradona stadium in Naples, Italy, Friday, May 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Players celebrate at the end of the Italian Serie A soccer match between Napoli and Cagliari at the Diego Maradona stadium in Naples, Italy, Friday, May 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
TENERIFE, Spain (AP) — The head of the World Health Organization sought Saturday to reassure residents of the Spanish island where passengers of a hantavirus-stricken cruise ship are expected to be evacuated, issuing them a direct message that the virus was “not another COVID.”
The Dutch-flagged MV Hondius, with more than 140 passengers and crew on board, is headed to Spain's Canary Islands, off the coast of West Africa, and is expected to arrive at the island of Tenerife early Sunday.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, along with Spain’s Health Minister Monica Garcia and Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska, were due on the island Saturday to coordinate the disembarkation of passengers and some crew.
“I know you are worried. I know that when you hear the word ‘outbreak’ and watch a ship sail toward your shores, memories surface that none of us have fully put to rest. The pain of 2020 is still real, and I do not dismiss it for a single moment,” Tedros said in a message to the people of Tenerife.
“But I need you to hear me clearly: This is not another COVID. The current public health risk from hantavirus remains low. My colleagues and I have said this unequivocally, and I will say it again to you now,” Tedros added.
The WHO, Spanish authorities and cruise company Oceanwide Expeditions said nobody on the Hondius is currently showing symptoms of the virus.
Hantavirus can cause life-threatening illness. It usually spreads when people inhale contaminated residue of rodent droppings and isn’t easily transmitted between people. But the Andes virus detected in the cruise ship outbreak may be able to spread between people in rare cases. Symptoms usually show between one and eight weeks after exposure.
Three people have died since the outbreak, and five passengers who left the ship are infected with hantavirus.
Some on Tenerife say they are worried. On board the cruise ship, some Spanish passengers have voiced concern about being stigmatized.
“I tell you, I don’t like this very much,” said 69-year-old resident Simon Vidal. “Anyone can say what they want. Why did they have to bring a boat from another country here? Why not anywhere else, why bring it to the Canary Islands?”
Others said they empathized with the boat's passengers, but were still concerned.
“The truth is that it is very worrying,” said 27-year-old Venezuelan immigrant Samantha Aguero. She added: “We feel a bit unsafe, we don’t feel as there are 100% security measures in place to welcome it. This is a virus after all and we have lived this during the pandemic. But we also need to have empathy.”
Spanish Health Minister Monica Garcia said passengers and some crew would disembark in Tenerife “under maximum safety conditions.”
The ship will not dock but will remain at anchor. Everyone disembarking will be checked for symptoms and won't be taken off the ship until a flight is already in Tenerife waiting to fly them off the island, Garcia said during a news conference in Madrid. There are currently people of more than 20 different nationalities on board.
Both the U.S. and the U.K. have agreed to send planes to evacuate their citizens. Americans are to be quarantined at a medical center in Nebraska.
All Spanish passengers will be transferred to a medical facility and quarantined, Garcia said. Oceanwide has listed 13 Spanish passengers and one Spanish crew member on board.
Those disembarking will leave behind their luggage, Garcia said, and will be allowed to take only a small bag with essential items, a cellphone, charger and documentation.
Some crew, as well as the body of a passenger who died on board, will remain on the ship, which will sail on to the Netherlands, where it will undergo disinfection, the minister added.
According to a letter sent by the Dutch foreign and health ministers to parliament late Friday, Spain has activated the EU civil protection mechanism for a medical evacuation plane equipped for infections diseases to be on standby in case anyone on the ship becomes ill. That person would then be transported by air to the European mainland.
The Dutch government will work with Spanish authorities and the ship company to arrange repatriation of Dutch passengers and crew as soon as possible after arrival in Tenerife, subject to medical conditions and advice from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, the letter said. Those without symptoms will go into home quarantine for six weeks and be monitored by local health services.
As the ship is Dutch-flagged, the Netherlands may also temporarily accommodate people of other nationalities and monitor them in quarantine, it said.
Health authorities across four continents were tracking down and monitoring more than two dozen passengers who disembarked before the deadly outbreak was detected. They were also scrambling to trace others who may have come into contact with them.
On April 24, nearly two weeks after the first passenger had died on board, more than two dozen people from at least 12 different countries left the ship without contact tracing, Dutch officials and the ship’s operator have said.
It wasn’t until May 2 that health authorities first confirmed hantavirus in a passenger.
Dutch public health authorities have been monitoring people who were on a flight that was briefly boarded by a Dutch ship passenger who later died and was confirmed to have hantavirus. Three people who were on the flight and had symptoms have all tested negative for hantavirus, Dutch National Institute for Public Health spokesperson Harald Wychgel told The Associated Press on Saturday.
Becatoros reported from Sparta, Greece. Associated Press reporters Angela Charlton in Paris and Helena Alves in Tenerife contributed to this report.
A Spanish Civil Guard officer inspects the area where passengers from the MV Hondius cruise ship are expected to arrive at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, Saturday, May 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)
Media crew members stand in the area where passengers from the MV Hondius cruise ship are expected to arrive at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, Saturday, May 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)
Workers set up temporary shelters in the area where passengers from the MV Hondius cruise ship are expected to arrive at the port of Granadilla in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, Saturday, May 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)
Passengers on the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, scan the horizon with binoculars during their voyage to Spain's port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo)
Passengers on the the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, watch epidemiologists board the boat in Praia, during their voyage to Spain's port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo)
A passenger checks his camera inside his cabin on the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, during the voyage to Spain's port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo)
Crew members of the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, wait their turns for a first interview with epidemiologists, during the voyage to Spain's port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo)
A passenger on the the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, MV Hondius, takes a photo of the ship's weighing anchor in Praia, during the voyage to Spain's port of Tenerife, May 6, 2026. (AP Photo)
