(Football news) Diego Maradona has always been linked to both teams, and they both won their home leagues the previous year. Despite this, neither team has shown much in the group stage or in defending the title.
Last season, Napoli advanced to the quarterfinals; this time, they were beaten both at home and away by Real Madrid, finishing as the runners-up in Group C of the ongoing Champions League.
Though they managed to advance to the knockout stages with three victories from their remaining four games—against Union Berlin and Braga—the Serie A team will now try to defeat Real Madrid’s longtime rivals Barcelona for the first time, having lost three previous meetings over the previous five seasons.
It makes for a high-profile start to life in the Napoli dugout for new boss Calzona, who replaced the sacked Walter Mazzarri as head coach on Monday, just two days before the visit of the five-time European champions.
Calzona becomes the club’s third head coach of the season having arrived on a short-term deal until June, and he will juggle Napoli duties alongside his job as Slovakia manager until the end of the campaign at least.
The 55-year-old knows the club well from previous spells as assistant manager and coach, but the scale of the task in front of him is clear after Mazzarri failed to turn things around following his return in November.
Indeed, the Partenopei remain a shadow of their former selves and are in danger of missing out on European qualification altogether: at this stage of the Scudetto-winning 2022-23 campaign, they had put 65 points on the board – some 19 more than they currently have.
Mazzarri’s final game in charge proved to be Saturday’s 1-1 draw with Genoa, when only a late leveller from Cyril Ngonge spared the Italian champions’ blushes as the Belgian’s first strike since joining in January rescued a point.
Just enough to keep them ninth in the table, it was only Napoli’s third goal in five matches – highlighting their impotency without last term’s Capocannoniere, Victor Osimhen.
As a minor consolation, that draw preserved the Partenopei’s unbeaten streak on home soil, as they have not lost any of their last five league fixtures at Stadio Maradona. In addition, defeat to Real Madrid earlier this season was Napoli’s sole loss in 16 Champions League home games, of which they have won 10.
However, the Campanian club have never before beaten Barcelona, to whom they lost in the last 16 four years ago, when exiting Europe’s top competition 4-2 on aggregate.
In reality, in their most recent “Maradona derby,” which took place in the Europa League knockout round of 2021–2022, Barcelona also prevailed 4–2. So, this week, history is on their side.
For the first time in three years, Barcelona was back in the Champions League elimination round. The Blaugrana won Group H, surpassing Porto on head-to-head record, having both collected 12 points from six games: a 5-0 thumping of Antwerp was followed by victories over the Portuguese team and Shakhtar Donetsk, but Barca then dropped two of the next three games.
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