Napoli never recovered from an early howler and were crushed by Barcelona quality, losing 4-2 at home, 5-3 on aggregate in the Europa League play-off.
Lorenzo Insigne and Fabian Ruiz shook off knocks, but Stanislav Lobotka, Andre-Frank Zambo Anguissa and Hirving Lozano were injured. Barca missed Clement Lenglet, Samuel Umtiti, Alex Balde, Sergi Roberto, Ansu Fati and Memphis Depay, while Dani Alves was not on their UEFA list.
The first leg ended 1-1 at Camp Nou, a soft Ferran Torres penalty cancelling out the Piotr Zielinski opener, and these teams met in the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona, a legend who played for both these clubs.
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It was the worst possible start, because Napoli gifted Barcelona a goal. Insigne’s short corner routine was evidently misunderstood by his teammates, because instead Barca went on the counter and Adama Traore spread it for Jordi Alba to score at the far post.
The second was a magnificent finish from Frenkie de Jong, who was given time and space to run forward and place an inch-perfect right-foot curler into the far top corner from outside the box. The good news is that the away goals rule has been abolished, so these would not count double.
Napoli repeatedly failed to play out from the back, as Sergino Dest and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang fired off target, but Victor Osimhen ran onto an Insigne pass and was brought down by a clumsy Marc-Andre Ter Stegen. At first the referee had awarded a free kick, but VAR confirmed the contact came inside the area, so Insigne converted the penalty.
Aubameyang had a free header on a corner, but somehow turned it wide of the back post after a Ferran Torres shot was deflected.
A corner was not cleared properly and as it was passed back around, Gerard Pique’s slightly scuffed shot dribbled into the far bottom corner across unsighted Alex Meret for 3-1.
Meret arched back to flap a Traore cross-shot out from under the bar, De Jong’s rebound charged down by teammate Aubameyang.
Barcelona did add a fourth with a wonderful passing move, Traore rolled across from the right and De Jong’s dummy let it through for Aubameyang to sweep the boot from 15 yards.
Insigne did have the ball in the net with a beautiful volley from Zielinski’s ball over the top, but he was flagged offside. Osimhen then saw his angled drive skim the far post before a high Mario Rui press won back the ball and allowed Matteo Politano to drill low into the near corner.
Andrea Petagna forced a save from Ter Stegen’s shoulder at the near post in the final minutes.
Napoli 2-4 Barcelona (3-5 agg)
Jordi Alba 9 (B), De Jong 13 (B), Insigne pen 23 (N), Pique 45 (B), Aubameyang 59 (B), Politano 87 (N)
No need for such words. Insigne definitely too casual and gives up that counter attack, but Napoli not in the same league as Barca, unfortunately.
Same, its simpmy stupid mistakes that firced them to play open game what against barsa is like suicide, everything was decided by simply stupidness in first minutes in game, terrible how they so not like themselves and not respect tifosis
Farmers league. A so called top Italian side cannot defeat the weakest Barcelona in decades and at home to top it off. Juventus couldn’t win against the 6th best team in Spain, Milan bottom of their group and Inter are not ready to hang with the big guns.
All italian people have to be mostly proud of juventus and never fight with them for scudetto, its only team who is glory for italy
Reaching the final is not glory. In fact only Inter last won the CL as an Italian team. Also the last team to reach the final of EL.Only Inter can actually challenge the top teams but will lose because they don’t have finishers. Others teams in Italy are just too many levels below the likes of Man City, Bayern, Liverpool, PSG and Real Madrid
They are fighting much longer, now its only fabruary and almost all italian teams are gonne, incredible how it was possible to beckme such losers, they not coming to kill nothing, they simply come to be BRAVE
Its unbielievieble terrible mentality, nothing same like these times when I became italian football fan… Mentality is totaly gonne, to be BRAVE… And be scared of team names like barsa, when you have much better quality footballers, but you are scared of team names… Like legendary FC Porto
You cannot play every three days, Serie A should have rested Napoli on Monday.
For the past 20 years Napoli have done nothing in Europe, getting knocked out even in pre qualifiers….why even bother qualifying?? I’d rather have fiorentina representing Italy anyday