Lazio Roma – Napoli: Stale Napoli Countered To The Brim by Organized Lazio (2-0)

Lazio started aggressively and quickly took a deserved lead, leaving Napoli with scraps to feed off. Gattuso’s stale side thus fell into the hosts’ trap as they could comfortably sit back against a stale opponent and put pressure in due time. 
Tactical analysis and match report by Kareem Bianchi.

Serie A’s gap to the top is slowly but surely widening as the less consistent teams take points off of each other favoring the league leaders. 

Napoli and Lazio both found themselves in the aforementioned situation, with Napoli, however, enjoying no draws thus far, keeping them one win away from the coveted top spots. 

Gennaro Gattuso opted for an almost entirely different eleven after Inter’s loss, worsened by Dries Mertens’ injury and Lorenzo Insigne’s suspension. They were replaced by Andrea Petagna and Matteo Politano respectively, while Nikola Maksimović and Fabián Ruiz came in to displace Manolas and Demme. 

Simone Inzaghi only made two changes to the previous draw against Benevento in Francesco Acerbi for Wesley Hoedt and Felipe Caicedo for Joaquín Correa. 

Lazio quickly mark territory 
Napoli started in an asymmetric shape. Di Lorenzo pushed up while Mario Rui stayed deeper at left halfback, delegating the width on the left to Hirving Lozano. Fabián dropped in the right defensive halfspace, If you divide the field in five vertical lanes, the halfspaces are the lanes that are not on the wing and not in the center. Because there is no touchline like on the wing, players have the freedom to go everywhere. But this zone often is not as well-defended as the very center. This makes it a very valuable . . .