Inter draw damages Lorenzo Insigne’s quest to sign off with a Scudetto

At least Lorenzo Insigne will not need to be taught another lesson by his children. He had barely made it back to his car after Napoli’s win over Torino in October when his sons, eight-year-old Carmine and six-year-old Christian, warned him that they would be getting the football out and showing him how to strike a penalty as soon as they got home.

Maybe they had some good pointers. The tame effort saved by Vanja Milinkovic-Savic in that match was Insigne’s third missed spot-kick of the season. Since then, he has converted four out of four. After Inter’s Stefan De Vrij kicked the heel of Victor Osimhen on Saturday, Insigne swept a confident penalty past Samir Handanovic – striking the ball with too much force for the keeper to reach despite diving the right way.

The goal took Lorenzo Insigne past Diego Maradona on Napoli’s all-time scoring list, a landmark that somehow felt less vivid than when he had drawn level three weeks before. Back then, after scoring against Salernitana, he had run to the TV cameras and tried to deliver a message to his club’s supporters. His words were hard to make out clearly, but various lip-readers had him telling the club’s fans “I will always be here.”

Not in a literal sense, obviously. Insigne’s decision to sign for Toronto FC had already been made public. Insigne’s presumed intention was simply to remind his club’s supporters of his attachment to the team that he plays for and the city where he was born and raised.

On the surface, Insigne’s story has parallels with that of Francesco Totti at Roma – a homegrown and lavishly talented forward who grew up to wear the captain’s armband, shattering records and each developing their own signature move. Where Totti had his ‘cucchiao’ chip, Insigne