Juventus throw away the first half in loss to Napoli

Key Highlights

• It was a complete disaster, and essentially gifted an entire 45 minutes to the hosts — and when you play against a team coached by Antonio Conte, that’s suicide. Spalletti quickly abandoned the experiment in the second half and Juve played measurably better — not that that was a high bar — and equalized just before the hour on what really ended up being their only good passage of football the entire game.
• But any chances of stealing points at the Maradona, where they hadn’t won since 2019, were again scuppered by the manager.
• Spalletti didn’t capitalize on the game’s momentum, and with 12 minutes left it was won of his own men, Weston McKennie, who attempted a headed clearance only to put the ball right onto the forehead of Rasmus Højlund to provide the final margin. But this team is going to take some long moments in the coming week to reflect on just how they managed to play so poorly against a team that had some major injury problems and was about as vulnerable as they could have been.
• If they don’t, the rest of the season is going to be a major disappointment. Spalletti was dealing with injuries on both ends of the pitch, as Vlahovic was joined on the shelf by Bremer, Federico Gatti, Daniele Rugani, Carlo Pinsoglio, and Arkadiusz Milik.
• He sent out the team’s usual 3-4-2-1 setup.