Inter to host Napoli in potential Serie A cracker
By Matt Addison
No one is going to catch Juventus at the summit of Serie A this season, but one of Napoli or Inter will finish in second place.
The two best teams in Italy aside from runaway leaders Juventus meet on Dec. 26 in what could be a Christmas cracker.
Inter have only won once in their last five games, including dropping into the Europa League having failed to beat PSV Eindhoven in the Champions League group stage. That win, though, came in their last match — a 1-0 home win over Udinese.
Napoli also dropped out of the Champions League into the Europa League having lost at Anfield to Liverpool last midweek; that defeat, though, was their only one in their last 14 games in all competitions.
Before this game, Inter travel to Chievo Verona on Saturday and Napoli host SPAL, both on Saturday. Should both teams win, the gap would remain six points between the two heading into the Dec. 26 clash.
Key battles
The biggest of the key battles sees Napoli’s world-class center-back Kalidou Koulibaly face Mauro Icardi, who is comfortably Inter’s top scorer this season with nine goals.
It will be the task of Ivan Rakitic to provide Icardi with chances; he will be joined by Marcelo Brozovic, Borja Valero and Radja Nainggolan in the Inter midfield.
Allan, Piotr Zielinski and Marek Hamsik are likely to form Napoli’s central three. In recent times, Hamsik has become more of a box-to-box midfielder, playing with a deeper starting position – he is yet to register either a goal or an assist this season in Serie A.
Napoli’s ammunition comes in the form of Arkadiusz Milik, Dries Mertens, Lorenzo Insigne and Jose Callejon. Three of those are likely to start, with the other — probably Milik — left to come off the bench.
Inter defenders Stefan de Vrij, Milan Skriniar and Sime Vrsaljko will be tasked with keeping them under wraps. No easy task against a Napoli side who have scored in 13 of their last 14 league matches.
Previous meetings
Both games between the sides last season finished goalless, and in fact, in stereotypical Italian style, at least one team has kept a clean sheet in each of the last six games.
The last time both sides scored in the same game between the teams was November 2015. Earlier that same year was the last score draw between the teams, a 2-2 tie.
Napoli have won nine of the last 20 games between the pair but there have been seven draws in that period. Given the buffer between the two and fourth place, and the gap to the top and Juventus, that might not be an unlikely outcome this time too.
Goals might not be a guarantee, but there will be drama and quality in abundance.