Lazio come for a fifth win running in Naples, against a Napoli their president sent into retreat
Napoli come out of a retreat at Pozzuoli ordered after a 4-1 defeat in Porto, their seventh in 14 matches this season. Lazio, top and unbeaten, have won on each of their last four league visits to the Maradona, which no side had done in Serie A.
Matteo Politano wanted, for once, a teammate other than the Italians to come out and explain. He had just watched Napoli lose 4-1 in Porto on Wednesday, conceding from set pieces that he said a side as physical as theirs should never allow, and come apart once Gabri Veiga made it 2-1. Two days later Aurelio De Laurentiis was at Castel Volturno, and the whole squad, the injured included, went into retreat at Pozzuoli for the 48 hours before Lazio.
Lazio should win it, narrowly: Napoli come out of a retreat with no fit full-back to face a side that has not lost all season and keeps winning in Naples.
What waits at the end of it has not lost all season. Gennaro Gattuso's Lazio have 28 points from ten matches, nine wins and a draw, three ahead of Inter, and have won six in a row. All five of their away matches have ended in wins, 3-0 at Juventus and 6-2 at Sassuolo among them, and they have had the week to themselves: Lazio are not in Europe this season, and Napoli only landed back from Portugal on Thursday.
The ground offers Napoli nothing either. Lazio won 1-0 at the Maradona in March 2023, 2-1 that September, 1-0 in December 2024 and 2-0 in April, and Napoli scored once in the four. No team had won four times running away to Napoli in Serie A before.
Massimiliano Allegri is back on the bench after a ban, and there the good news stops. Nine players are injured and Luca Marianucci is suspended after his red card in Turin. Giovanni Di Lorenzo and Mathías Olivera, both hurt at Juventus, leave him without a recognised full-back on either flank, against a side whose attacks have run down the left.
That left side is the one thing that has moved Napoli's way since Sunday. Mattia Zaccagni hurt his left thigh against Cagliari and is out until after the international break, so Tijjani Noslin moves wide and Andrea Pinamonti starts up front. It is thin hope for a club 14 points off the top, and De Laurentiis has built a retreat around a match that, lost, would send Napoli into the break 17 behind.
