Landucci: ‘Napoli had a bad second half, Juventus deserved win, but new injury problems’

NAPLES, ITALY - OCTOBER 24: Marco Landucci, SSC Napoli vice head coach, gestures during the Serie A match between SSC Napoli and AS Roma at Stadio Diego Armando Maradona on October 24, 2026 in Naples, Italy. (Photo by Francesco Pecoraro/Getty Images)

Max Allegri’s assistant Marco Landucci reveals new Napoli injury problems, but ‘we had a bad second half and Juventus deserved to win, there’s not much else to say.’

The coach completed his two-match touchline ban by sitting in the stands of a stadium he knows so well thanks to 10 years at Juve in two different spells.

Assistant Marco Landucci was on the bench for this evening’s big match, but there were some late decisions forced upon them, with Rasmus Hojlund and Vanja Milinkovic-Savic laid low by a virus.

Stanislav Lobotka, Benoit Badiashile, Leonardo Spinazzola, David Neres, Alisson Santos, Costantino Favasuli and Alessandro Buongiorno were already out of action.

It was an even match with few big chances until two moments of individual magic, as Kerim Alajbegovic and Jeremie Boga hit stunners from outside the box, along with Luca Marianucci’s second yellow card.

Landucci acknowledged Napoli errors

“Quite simply, we had a bad second half and Juve deserved to win. When you lose, you have to just stay quiet and accept it,” Landucci told DAZN Italia.

“We had some absences, but this isn’t an excuse, we should’ve done better after the break. I thought it was a good first half, Lucca was denied by a great Vicario save, but that wasn’t enough.”

Napoli are now stranded in eighth place on 14 points alongside Bologna, already nine adrift of Como in the Champions League spots.

They are eight points worse off than at this stage last season, when after 10 rounds they were alone in first place.

“We are not worried, but we are very disappointed, because we cared about this match. The truth is that’s how the game went, we need to shut up and prepare for Wednesday. We have many injuries, as many teams do with this fixture list, it is somewhat inevitable and you have to keep going.”

It was noted that on the two goals, the Napoli defenders backed off and allowed the Juventus players to come forward, so was that a tactical choice from the bench?

“Absolutely not,” replied Landucci. “Those were great finishes, but we should not have allowed them to get into that space. We back-tracked too much, this is the difference between conceding and not conceding, and it’s not the first time. If you push up and defend well, you’re not going to concede that.

“We all could’ve done better in the second half. It seems a clear and logical analysis to me. Juventus did better than us and deserved to win.”

Napoli looked as if they had more injury problems, because Kevin De Bruyne and Giovanni Di Lorenzo were substituted at half-time, then Matias Olivera looked distraught when hobbling off the field just after the Marianucci red card.

“Clearly, they could not continue. De Bruyne had a problem with his ankle, Giovanni Di Lorenzo I’m not sure, but he could not continue either. Even with that, we need to do better. It was a balanced encounter decided by these great goals, but we didn’t help our own situation.”

Has Landucci spoken to Allegri yet, seeing as the coach was in the stands?

“Yes, we spoke in the dressing room, but there’s not a lot to say. Obviously, he wasn’t happy, would you have been happy? He just said we should’ve done better in the second half, we paid a heavy price for errors, that’s it.”