Napoli beat Fiorentina 2-1 at the Maradona this Sunday afternoon. Romelu Lukaku opened the scoring before the half-hour mark, slotting in a rebound after David De Gea parried a right-footed shot from Scott McTominay. The second Napoli goal came after an hour of play when Giacomo Raspadori cut in and scored with his left foot. The visitors cut the deficit through Albert Gudmundsson’s curling shot, but Napoli stood firm and held on to pick up a precious three points.
Coach Antonio Conte commented his side’s performance:
"We deserved the win, but we should’ve been more clinical in front of goal. We shouldn't have let the match be in the balance until the 90th minute, given that we dominated. That’s where we went wrong, but otherwise the lads played a great game.
"The lads are giving everything – we’re going beyond our limits. This team are making what’s actually extraordinary seem normal and that’s thanks to everyone's commitment and hard work.
"I’m fully satisfied with the performance, but I’ll say again what I already said in the press conference before the match: we must be more determined and ruthless in front of goal.
"We’ll revel in this win tonight but as of tomorrow we’ll get back to work and prepare for our next game in Venice. We’ve got ten Serie A matches to go and every game will be like a final. We’ll fight for everything we can and then we’ll see where we are able to get to.”
Romelu Lukaku, who provided both a goal and an assist, offered his thoughts on the encounter:
"We showed all the desire to win. We wanted to win this big game and get back on track in the best way possible.
"It was a tough match - Fiorentina are a tough team, but we deserved the win. We’re a tough proposition to beat and we want to keep on improving. We’re taking things game by game, giving our all, and we’ll see where that gets us.”
Giacomo Raspadori also shared his post-match opinions:
"I owe a lot to Romelu – he laid on a splendid assist for me. 80% percent of the goal is down to him. The most important thing is that we got the win as we seek to climb the table.
"The only flaw in this performance is that we should’ve seen out the game earlier and not left Fiorentina in with a chance until the end. Today’s win was fundamental and we deservedly got it."
Alex Meret echoed his team-mates thoughts:
"We were great and ruthless today. We need to be more precise when it comes to our finishing, but in terms of overall play we did well and dominated Fiorentina.
"We’ll work to improve in every aspect of our performances, both in the management of the game and in our finishing. We’re doing great things and we want to improve even more so that we’re at our best heading into these final ten matchdays.”
Napoli 2-1 Fiorentina (HT 1-0)
Scorers: Lukaku 26, Raspadori 60, Gudmundsson 66
NAPOLI: Meret; Di Lorenzo, Rrahmani, Buongiorno, Politano (Olivera 82), Gilmour, Lobotka, McTominay (Billing 87), Spinazzola (Juan Jesus 90), Raspadori (Simeone 87), Lukaku.
FIORENTINA: De Gea; Comuzzo (Moreno 74), Mari, Ranieri (Pongracic 59) Dodo, Ndour, Cataldi (Beltran 82), Fagioli, Parisi (Gosens 59) Gudmundsson, Kean.
Referee: Colombo
Booked: Gudmundsson, Buongiorno, Pongracic
