Maradona: Eighties idol (Photography/Allsport)

So it was no surprise when, two weeks ago, a real donkey (ciuccio in Italian) was brought to the training centre in Soccavo and left free to roam on the five-a-side pitch. To compound a surreal experience for visitors that day, Napoli were introducing a new kids' section at their San Paolo Stadium for the upcoming Serie B game against Palermo. The sight of beleaguered manager Franco Colomba posing for pictures with a clown was too good to be true.

Napoli - or SSC Napoli, to give them their official name, have been clowning around for too long now. No immediate solution to what is now seen as a perennial state of crisis seems apparent: since the glory days of the mid and late eghties, the club have been in a downward spiral. It has left them languishing near the bottom of Serie B, and matters off the field could hardly be worse.

Matters came to a head on Friday, November 29, when some fans ambushed defender Francesco Baldini outside his home, damaged his car and punched and kicked him, leaving him with a cut eye and bruises to his shoulder and knee.

It was the latest in a series of shameful events involving the once-successful club, but up until then they had been confined to the pitch or boardroom, even though some players had admitted they were living in fear and rarely ventured outside their homes because of the hostile atmosphere.

Morale is so low that the home game against Palermo attracted only 3,376 pay-on-the-day customers along with about 6,500 season-ticket holders, and ended in another goalless draw. Napoli have not won at home for more than six months and are travelling, or rather crawling, towards relegation.

The team includes some veteran players who should surely be doing better, and 47-year old boss Colomba is in a precarious position. Large numbers of disenchanted fans have been calling for his head, and the fear-inducing vote of confidence from chairman Salvatore Naldi will not have given him much hope.

Naldi, incidentally, was identified by some as the mastermind of the ciuccio motivational prank (though it backfired, as the donkey's braying distracted the players throughout the training session), and he appeared in the directors box for the Palermo game wearing a sky blue wig.

Seen by some as a saviour and by others as just the latest in a not-so-long line of owners unable to resurrect the team, Naldi has been trying to steer the club to safety after previous boss Giorgio Corbelli (who had previously purchased the Rome basketball team and has now acquired the legendary Olimpia Milano basketball club) had not been able to consolidate its position in Serie A.

Napoli briefly graced the top division in 2000-01, their only season at that level since 1997-98, and one which ended in immediate relegation. Naldi recently stated that he cannot save the club on his own - and there could soon be some action on the financial side, when the Italian equivalent of an AGM will expect Naldi and his partners to stump up a few million euros for the club. He has been seeking backing from various financial institutions in Italy and abroad, but many have been wary because of Napoli's precarious situation.

Because Corbelli is still owed money from his sale of Napoli and former partner Gallo is threatening to have the club closed down if he is not given the 4.1million euros he is due, it is easy to see why many fans have almost given up hope. This, for a club that used to sell out the San Paolo when Diego Maradona starred for the club in the mid-eighties, is a bleak scenario.

The Maradona years were, obviously, the club's most memorable: from his surreal introduction to a packed San Paolo, when he managed to send the crowd in a frenzy by just trapping and kicking a football to no one in particular, to the double-winning season in 1986-87 to the Uefa Cup triumph in 1989 to another Serie A title in 1989-90, Napoli went through an unprecedented time.

It has to be said that Maradona's iconic status has not been damaged in Naples by his troubles in more recent years: as an example of this cult, a bar in central Naples has set up a small shrine to the legendary player, complete with his portrait, shields commemorating Napoli's first and second league titles and a small glass box containing an 'original' hair from the maestro's barnet.

That the Maradona-less Napoli almost went bankrupt only three years after his departure, and only the sale of the remaining best players staved off liquidation, is another example of how this club has so often had trouble finding a steady path despite a potentially enormous worldwide fanbase .

Recent events, which have also helped overturn a long-standing (and wrong) perception that fans in Naples are somehow better-behaved than those anywhere else, add to the sense of gloom.