Landucci: Napoli's defensive retreat, not tactics, cost them at Juventus
Max Allegri's assistant says Napoli's backline dropped too deep in a second half Juventus dominated, as fresh injuries compound a season already eight points off last year's pace.
Napoli's 2-0 defeat at Juventus was not down to a game plan gone wrong, according to Marco Landucci, but to a side that stopped doing the one thing that had kept the match level.
Max Allegri's assistant took the bench at the Allianz Stadium on Sunday while the Juventus coach served the final match of his two-game touchline ban from the stands, a ground Allegri knows intimately after two separate spells in charge of the club, Football Italia reported.
Landucci was blunt afterwards. "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," he told DAZN Italia, as relayed by Football Italia.
Why the back line kept dropping off
Both Juventus goals came from outside the box, Kerim Alajbegovic and Jeremie Boga each producing a finish of genuine quality to separate two sides who otherwise had few clear chances.
Asked whether Napoli's defenders had deliberately backed off to protect against the counter, Landucci rejected the idea outright. "Absolutely not," he said. "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."
That distinction matters tactically. A side that retreats as an opponent advances hands over the time and the angle a shooter needs from distance, whereas a line that steps up and compresses the pitch forces the same strike into a contest under pressure. Landucci's point was that Napoli had the tools to do the latter and simply did not apply them consistently after the interval.
"If you push up and defend well, you're not going to concede that," he added, framing the problem as a repeated failure of collective discipline rather than a one-off lapse against two moments of individual brilliance.
A match already shaped by absences
Napoli arrived in Turin with a lengthy injury list that included Stanislav Lobotka, Benoit Badiashile, Leonardo Spinazzola, David Neres, Alisson Santos, Costantino Favasuli and Alessandro Buongiorno. Late problems then forced further changes, with a virus ruling out Rasmus Hojlund and Vanja Milinkovic-Savic before kick-off.
The disruption continued during the game itself. Kevin De Bruyne and Giovanni Di Lorenzo were both withdrawn at half-time, and Matias Olivera limped off visibly upset shortly after Luca Marianucci's second yellow card left Napoli down to ten men.
Landucci confirmed the severity of at least one issue. "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," he said, declining to use the fitness list as an excuse for the result.
That caveat is worth taking at face value rather than as a deflection. Managing a game with a makeshift midfield and a man down in the closing stages is genuinely harder, and the transition moments that produced both Juventus goals are exactly where thinned-out squads tend to be punished, since cover and communication in the defensive third depend on players who know each other's habits under pressure.
Standings that reflect a flat start
The defeat leaves Napoli eighth on 14 points, level with Bologna and nine points adrift of Como, who occupy the final Champions League qualification spot. A year ago at the same stage, after ten rounds, Napoli sat alone at the top of the table, eight points better off than they are now.
Landucci did not pretend the gap was insignificant. "We are not worried, but we are very disappointed, because we cared about this match," he said. "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."
He also addressed his post-match conversation with Allegri, who watched from the stands before the two spoke in the dressing room. "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."
Landucci's description of the first half as solid, pointing to Lorenzo Lucca being denied by a strong save from Michele Di Gregorio, suggests Napoli's issue was specifically about how they managed the game after the break rather than a broader loss of shape across ninety minutes.
Napoli now turn to their midweek fixture with an injury list that shows no sign of shortening, a congested fixture list Landucci acknowledged directly, and a table position that puts real distance between this campaign and last season's early form.