Napoli's set-piece collapse sinks them to 4-1 defeat at Porto
Three unmarked headers from corners and a late red card undid Napoli's fightback as FC Porto won 4-1 at the Estádio do Dragão in the Champions League.
Napoli travelled to Porto already stretched thin by absences, and it showed in the one phase of the game that decided the result: defending set pieces. Francesco Farioli's side scored twice from corners and hit the woodwork from a third, exposing a Napoli back line that simply could not pick up runners inside the box.
The final score, 4-1 to the hosts, flattered neither the quality of Napoli's response nor the scale of their defensive breakdown, according to Football Italia's account of the match at the Estádio do Dragão.
Corners became Napoli's weak point all night
The pattern was set inside eleven minutes. Gabriel Veiga swung in a corner and Jan Bednarek rose completely unmarked from nine yards to head Porto in front. It was not an isolated lapse — before half-time Bednarek was given the same freedom again from another corner, this time rattling the crossbar rather than scoring.
The warning signs were not heeded. In the second half, with Napoli chasing the game, a third corner produced a third unchallenged header, this time converted by Jakub Kiwior, the former Spezia and Arsenal defender, to make it 3-1. Three separate instances of the same failure in a single match points to a structural problem in how Napoli organised their marking at set pieces that night, rather than a one-off error.
Porto's other route to goals came through sustained second-half pressure rather than transition play. Veiga himself also struck the bar from the edge of the box, and Santiago Gimenez, on for Porto, forced a save from Alex Meret before later supplying the pass that let Veiga beat the goalkeeper one-on-one for 2-1.
McTominay kept Napoli in it before the collapse
For a spell either side of half-time, Napoli looked capable of taking something from the match. Scott McTominay scrambled in an equaliser three minutes before the interval after Diogo Costa had twice denied Matteo Politano and Rasmus Hojlund in the same goalmouth sequence — his third goal in his last two Champions League appearances, Football Italia noted.
Napoli set up in a 3-5-2 with Kevin De Bruyne, passed fit after an ankle knock, pushed into a more advanced role alongside Hojlund, who himself had recovered from flu symptoms that kept him out of the weekend defeat at Juventus. Hojlund was lively throughout, shrugging off two fouls to drive a shot narrowly wide and having a penalty appeal waved away when running onto a De Bruyne through ball.
That attacking pairing gave Napoli enough thrust to trouble Porto in open play, including a Politano strike that forced the first of Costa's reaction saves, but it could not compensate for what was happening at the other end on dead-ball situations.
A red card ended any hope of a comeback
Napoli's night unravelled completely in the closing minutes. Rafa Marin was sent off in the 89th minute for bringing down Samu with no attempt to play the ball, and Samu converted the resulting penalty to make it 4-1 in stoppage time. A numerical disadvantage at that stage only confirmed a defeat that had already been shaped by the corners conceded earlier.
Porto had gone into the match with a perfect domestic record under Farioli but had lost all three of their previous European fixtures this season, against Manchester City, Real Betis and PSV Eindhoven, so a comfortable continental win carried extra weight for the Portuguese club, even with Chris Smalling, Vasco Sousa and William Gomes all missing.
For Napoli, the result follows a pattern of inconsistency in this competition: a 4-3 win over Bodo/Glimt had finally delivered their first Champions League points, only for a 2-0 Serie A loss at Juventus to precede this heavier defeat. The injury list that kept Giovanni Di Lorenzo, Mathias Olivera, Stanislav Lobotka and several others out in Porto will not clear quickly, and unless the marking at corners is fixed, the same vulnerability is likely to resurface in Serie A as well as in Europe.