Napoli triumph at the Olimpico
Napoli beat Lazio at the Olimpico after dominating the entire match. Leonardo Spinazzola scored the opener in the 13th minute with a right-footed volley after receiving a cross from Matteo Politano. The Azzurri’s second goal came with Amir Rrahmani just after the 30-minute mark, as he headed in from a set piece and made it 2-0 for Napoli.
Here are Antonio Conte’s comments following his team’s victory:
“I want to congratulate the players: playing such a high-quality game against a good opponent wasn’t easy. I saw physical intensity and technical skills. We controlled the game and prevented Lazio from playing their best football.
“Our level today was very high. We must continue with this level of quality, even though I realise that playing every three days is very demanding.
“Hopefully what happened to [David] Neres is nothing serious, but rotating the squad right now is very difficult given the number of our injured players. I’m the coach and it’s my job to optimise our resources. We’ll need everyone’s energy and a greater effort to keep up with the high level that we showed today.”
A delighted Amir Brahmani, who scored the second goal, had this to say:
“We showed that we are a solid team and can play high-level football. We’ve secured our fourth consecutive 2-0 win and hope we can keep it up because not conceding goals is very important.
“My goal was the result of a set-piece routine that we’ve tried many times in training. I’m happy I was able to score again, most importantly because it allowed us to secure those three points.”
Matteo Politano had this to say about his team’s performance:
“We wanted to start the year well to keep up with the teams at the top of the table. We were able to dominate the game from the start and show that we deserved this win.
“We beat a good opponent on a difficult pitch and we want to keep winning. We are going to play many games this month, but we have the technical skills and the right mentality to compete until the end.”
LAZIO 0-2 NAPOLI (HT: 0-2)
Scorers: Spinazzola 13, Rrahmani 32
LAZIO: Provedel; Marusic, Gila, Romagnoli, Pellegrini (Lazzari 62) Guendouzi, Cataldi (Belahyane 71), Basic; Cancellieri (Isaksen 71), Noslin, Zaccagni (Rodriguez 87).Coach:MaurizioSarri
NAPOLI: Milinkovic-Savic; Di Lorenzo, Rrahmani (Buongiorno 79), Juan Jesus; Politano, McTominay, Lobotka, Spinazzola (Gutierrez 79), Neres (Mazzocchi 70), Elmas (Noa Lang 86), Hojlund (Ambrosino 86).
Coach: Antonio Conte
Referee: Massa
Booked: Zaccagni, Rrahmani.
Sent off: Noslin 81, Cataldi and Mazzocchi 87.
