Champions League | Napoli 2-1 Sporting – Conte’s side secure first UCL win of the season

Napoli picked up their first Champions League win of the season with a 2-1 league phase victory over Sporting tonight, with a brace from Rasmus Hojlund enough to see of a brave Portuguese side.

You can follow the action as it happened on our LiveBlog.

The visitors started the game strong in their attempts to retain possession in the opening minutes. Sporting did not allow Napoli much of the ball until the first five minutes had elapsed. The hosts had their first opportunity shortly after, with some promising attacking play down the wing resulting in a corner: which bounced neatly for De Bruyne outside of the box. However, the Belgian fired the ball high over the bar.

Over the next ten minutes, Napoli grew more and more into the game and began to dominate play in the middle of the park. A painful collision between De Bruyne and Ivan Fresneda gave both teams cause for concern but after initial pain, the duo were deemed fit to play on.

Napoli had a couple more half-chances before Sporting started to grow into the game around the half hour mark. The visitors were now on top for five minutes or so, with it being Napoli’s turn to hit their opposition on a counter attack.

This worked out perfectly for Conte’s side when after a period of Sporting threat, Kevin De Bruyne launched a lovely through ball for Rasmus Hojlund to run onto and calmly slot the ball past Rui Silva to give the hosts a 1-0 lead.

Sporting were lucky to only be a goal down heading into half-time, as the goal gave Conte’s side more confidence and they had another few efforts to extend their lead before the referee brought the first half to a close.

Napoli fortunate after losing steam in second half

Napoli started the second half as the stronger of the two teams, looking to pick up where they left off before the break. However, a lot of the Azzurri shots in the match were long-range efforts from outside of the box and failed to test Rui Silva.

Napoli’s wastefulness was capitalised on by the visitors when Matteo Politano was deemed to have committed a foul in the penalty box, with half-time substitute Luis Suarez stepping up to send Vanja Milinkovic-Savic the wrong way, tying the game up at 1-1.

The hosts were left shellshocked by the equaliser and lost all of their momentum that they had built up before Sporting grabbed a goal back. The pressure was now on Napoli to score, as the visitors looked much more comfortable with the score tied.

As both sides made substitutes, the flow of the game grew more and more interrupted. Conte attempted to switch things up with Noa Lang and David Neres coming on to the flanks to replace McTominay and Politano.

Something must have worked, as with ten minutes to go, Kevin De Bruyne put a good ball in from a corner-kick and Hojlund rose to head the ball in – with the former Premier League duo linking up for the second time in the match.

Sporting tried to fight their way back into the game again but a resolute Napoli defended well and secured all three points.