Napoli overcame AC Milan at the Stadio Maradona on Sunday night to remain three points off league leaders Inter.
Matteo Politano opened the scoring with barely a minute on the clock when he ran onto Giovanni Di Lorenzo's forward pass holding off several Rossoneri shirts and fired low into the corner from the edge of the box.
Romelu Lukaku added a second on 20 minutes - his 400th career goal – after Billy Gilmour picked him out with a clever pass.
Midway through the second half Alex Meret thwarted Milan's hopes of a comeback when he saved Santiago Gimenez's penalty.
Luka Jovic did pull one back with six minutes remaining but Napoli held on to claim a deserved victory.
This is what Antonio Conte had to say after the final whistle:
"We were excellent in the first half and dominated the game. I liked the first part of the second half too but then we began to wane as the match wore on partly due to the condition of some of the players.
"Scott [McTominay] woke up with flu-like symptoms this morning so I had to change the team at the last minute. [Frank] Anguissa wasn't at his best, as I mentioned during the press conference, and [David] Neres was returning. We were supposed to start with [Giacomo] Raspadori but McTominay become unavailable changed things and I had to come up with a different solution.
“Let's not forget that we were up against an excellent team in Milan. We knew we might struggle at times, especially towards the end, but we were good value for the win given how we played over the 90 minutes.”
“If we can get everyone fit, we can have our say until the end. These lads have been doing something extraordinary until now. We must concentrate on these last eight games and do everything we can to stay up there and challenge the leaders.”
Napoli 2-1 Milan (HT 2-0)
Scorers: Politano 2, Lukaku 19, Jovic 84.
NAPOLI: Meret; Di Lorenzo, Rrahmani, Buongiorno, Olivera, Anguissa (Billing 65), Lobotka (Juan Jesus 81), Gilmour, Politano (Mazzocchi 85), Neres (Ngonge 85), Lukaku (Simeone 85).
Coach: Conte.
AC MILAN: Maignan; Walker (Jimenez 79), Gabbia, Pavlovic, Theo, Bondo (Leao 46), Fofana, Pulisic (Jovic 79), Reijnders, Joao Felix (Chuckwueze 56) Abraham (Gimenez 56).
Coach: Conceicao.
Referee: Sozza (Milan).
Booked: Lukaku, Jimenez.
