February 27, (THEWILL) – Napoli overcame Maurizio Sarri’s Lazio 2-1 to reach joint top of the table with Milan thanks to Lorenzo Insigne’s goal and assist for Fabian Ruiz’s last-gasp winner.
Both teams were eliminated from the Europa League on Thursday night, losing to FC Porto and Barcelona, respectively, and are now fully focused on Serie A.
The hosts welcomed back Luis Alberto and Lucas Leiva after their suspensions, but Pedro was not fully fit. Napoli were without Hirving Lozano, Andre-Frank Zambo Anguissa, and Axel Tuanzebe, but Nigeria’s Victor Osimhen led the attack line.
Felipe Anderson rolled over from the right for Luis Alberto to open the scoring after six minutes, but the latter turned wide, as did Ciro Immobile under pressure from Giovanni Di Lorenzo. It was gearing up to be an evening of exciting football.
Thomas Strakosha got down to knock away a viciously bending Piotr Zielinski daisy-cutter from going in and Adam Marusic did enough to keep Osimhen from meeting Lorenzo Insigne’s pass, but Immobile’s curler shaved a coat of paint off the crossbar.
Insigne sliced inside Marusic only to have Luiz Felipe charge down his right-foot curler, and Ospina was alert on Milinkovic-Savic from close range. No chances were converted and the teams went into the break deadlocked.
After the interval, Lazio had a good chance but Ospina saved a Felipe Anderson shot and Kalidou Koulibaly made a crucial clearance to prevent Luis Alberto from tapping in the rebound.
On the hour mark, Napoli finally broke the deadlock when their strong press forced a sloppy clearance, which Insigne took advantage of by hitting it hard and low from outside the box into the bottom corner with his trusted right foot. It was his first open-play goal in Serie A this season.
Amir Rrahmani flicked on a corner, which Stefan Radu cleared before Eljif Elmas could tap in, and they nearly doubled their lead.
A few minutes later, Insigne had the ball in the back of the net again, but he was offside after turning in the rebound from an Osimhen stop.
While Ospina flew to parry an absolutely ferocious long-range Pedro screamer with his trailing hand, Strakosha did just enough to thwart Politano on the counter-attack. Ospina was also fortunate when Mario Rui chested the ball back to his goalkeeper far too casually, and Pedro nearly pounced.
However, there was nothing Ospina could do to prevent Pedro from hitting a fantastic left-foot volley after a free kick was cleared to the edge of the box.
As the game ticked towards the end on 1-1, Osimhen’s attempt was deflected wide by Luiz Felipe. But, deep into stoppage time, Eljif Elmas drove forward, spread the ball for Insigne, who brilliantly laid it off for Fabian Ruiz to drive his left foot through and hit the bottom corner for the win.
The celebrations at the Stadio Olimpico were raucous, as the goal tied Napoli and Milan for first place in the table ahead of their match next week.
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
