NAPLES, OCTOBER 1 \u2013 In the first half, Conte's men enjoyed good possession, which however resulted in few chances despite the Azzurri playing their game and showing their determination to achieve their objective.<\/p>\n
And then, in the 36th minute, De Bruyne burst from defense, moved up the midfield, and passed the ball to Hojlund, who coordinated his play and placed it between the legs of Rui Silva with a powerful right-footed strike, straight into the Sporting goal. The Stadio Diego Armando Maradona erupted in a roar of joy; in an instant, the Azzurri fans forgot their defeat in Milan, enthralled by the De Bruyne-Hojlund duo.<\/p>\n
Sporting proved to be a quality team, but as Antonio Conte predicted, "games, especially in the Champions League, are difficult and full of pitfalls." So, in the 62nd minute, referee Makkelie spotted Politano tripping in the penalty area and called a foul for Sporting. Suarez stepped up to the spot, shot, and made no mistake, putting the ball past Milinkovic-Savic.<\/p>\n
Neres and Lang enter the field to replace McTominay and Politano who in fact could have given more.<\/p>\n
The draw didn't discourage the Neapolitans; the Maradona chant grew stronger minute by minute, and the Azzurri maintained the right mentality. Although Sporting had gained confidence, Conte's team had assimilated the "work culture" the coach spoke of in the pre-match press conference, and their attitude paid off. In the 79th minute, the Dane gave Napoli hope again. De Bruyne's extraordinary cross from the left flank found the head of Hojlund, who slotted the ball into the opponent's net, earning him a spot on the podium of best-of-the-match players alongside Napoli's number 11.<\/p>\n
The match ends 2-1 for the Azzurri, after 36 years Napoli challenges Sporting again and beats the Portuguese.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NAPOLI, 1\u00b0 OTTOBRE – Nel primo tempo gli uomini di Conte hanno fatto un buon possesso palla che per\u00f2 si traduce in poche occasioni nonostante gli azzurri abbiano fatto la loro partita mostrando di essere determinati al raggiungimento dell’obiettivo. Ed ecco che al 36\u00b0 minuto De Bruyne parte dalla difesa, scala il centro campo e […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18693,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sb_editor_width":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"footnotes":"","_ppma_block_editor_authors":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[124,125,93,42,126],"ppma_author":[803],"class_list":["post-18689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-calcio","tag-2-1","tag-champions","tag-hojlund","tag-napoli","tag-sporting"],"relative_dates":{"created":"12 months ago","modified":"4 months ago"},"authors":[{"term_id":803,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"gaetano-fioretti","display_name":"Gaetano Fioretti","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","first_name":"","last_name":"","user_url":"","author_category":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/primasport.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/primasport.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/primasport.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/primasport.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/primasport.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18689"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/primasport.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120636,"href":"https:\/\/primasport.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18689\/revisions\/120636"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/primasport.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/primasport.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/primasport.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/primasport.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18689"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/primasport.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=18689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}