Napoli lean on a reshaped De Bruyne as Roma patch together a midfield for Maradona test
Massimiliano Allegri sticks with Kevin De Bruyne in a deeper role as struggling Napoli host an injury-hit Roma side forced to improvise in midfield.
Napoli go into this Scudetto-era fixture well off the pace after a wretched run that included a 3-1 loss to bottom side Venezia, two defeats in a row across Serie A and the Champions League, and only a scrappy 4-3 win over Bodo/Glimt in Europe on Tuesday to arrest the slide, according to Football Italia.
Massimiliano Allegri has made no changes up front, keeping Rasmus Hojlund, Scott McTominay and Matteo Politano in the side, while Kevin De Bruyne continues in the deeper midfield role he has not enjoyed being asked to play, Football Italia reports.
De Bruyne's positional compromise
Dropping a player of De Bruyne's instincts into a double-pivot alongside McTominay, with Andre-Frank Zambo Anguissa also occupying central space, changes what Napoli get from him. Instead of operating between the lines where he can turn and thread passes into forwards, he is further from goal and tasked with first building the attack rather than finishing it.
That shift matters because De Bruyne is not a natural deep-lying playmaker in the mould of a regista; his value has always come from arriving late into the box or combining in the final third. Asking him to dictate tempo from deeper areas sacrifices some of that end product in exchange for control, a trade-off Allegri appears willing to make while Napoli search for defensive stability.
McTominay's two goals against Bodo/Glimt were the Scot's first of the season, and his continued inclusion alongside De Bruyne suggests Allegri wants runners breaking from midfield rather than a single creator pulling strings in front of the back line.
Absences on both sides
Napoli remain without Alisson Santos, David Neres, Costantino Favasuli and Alessandro Buongiorno, though Antonio Vergara is back among the substitutes. Amir Rrahmani has been dealing with flu-like symptoms and is short of full fitness, and reports suggesting Vanja Milinkovic-Savic would start ahead of Alex Meret in goal have not been confirmed, Football Italia says.
Roma's problems run deeper. Lorenzo Pellegrini had to be withdrawn during the midweek 4-0 Champions League win over Slovan Bratislava because of a tendon issue, adding his name to a list that already included Paulo Dybala, Manu Koné and Mile Svilar.
Bryan Cristante came off the bench in that game to mark more than a month out through injury, and his return gives Roma a senior option in midfield just as that area thins out. Donyell Malen is back too, available again after serving a suspension that kept him out of the 2-0 win over Genoa.
Pisilli pushed forward to cover the gaps
With Evan Ndicka and Gianluca Mancini rested in midweek and recalled here, and with Koné and Pellegrini both unavailable, Niccolo Pisilli has been moved into a more advanced role than usual. It is a pragmatic reshuffle rather than a tactical innovation: Roma's actual creative midfield options have been reduced by injury, so Pisilli is asked to cover ground higher up the pitch alongside Matias Soulé in support of Malen, with Bryan Cristante and Danny Rensch screening behind De Roon.
That kind of enforced restructuring tends to show up most in transition moments, when a side needs an extra body to recycle possession or track a runner. Roma's defensive solidity away from home this season, built around a settled back line, will be tested by how well Pisilli and the rest of a patched-together midfield cope with Napoli's double pivot in open play.
A fixture Roma rarely win away
History favours the hosts here. Roma have not won in Naples since a 4-2 victory in March 2018, and since then the record reads four draws and four defeats in that fixture, per Football Italia. Their last win over Napoli anywhere came in a 2-0 result in Rome in December 2023, since when the two sides have shared three draws and two Roma losses.
Napoli's home record this season — 13 points from a possible total at the Maradona — gives them a platform, but their recent form away from that pattern, including the Venezia defeat, shows the limits of relying on home advantage alone. Roma's away record of five wins, two draws and one defeat from eight suggests they are capable of taking points on the road even while missing key personnel.
Napoli: Meret; Di Lorenzo, Marin, Badiashile, Olivera; Anguissa, De Bruyne, McTominay; Politano, Hojlund, Lang. Roma: Gollini; Mancini, Ndicka, Hermoso; Wesley, Cristante, De Roon, Rensch; Pisilli, Soulé; Malen. Kick-off is scheduled for 17.00 UK time at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona, Football Italia reports.