The
Diego Maradona
stadium experienced another party in a season that is projected to be unforgettable.
Because
Napoli
(Giovanni Simeone played the last 9 minutes)
defeated Eintracht Frankfurt 3-0
in the second leg of one of the keys to the
Champions League
round of 16 and thus advanced to the quarterfinals for the first time in its history. final of the main European club tournament.
Before the celebration, the Neapolitans had had to observe a racket
in the center of their city
that had the German ultras who had arrived in Italy as star protagonists and some of their own as supporting actors.
The team led by
Luciano Spalletti
had solved a large part of the task three weeks before,
when they had won 2-0 in Germany
.
The only question was how a team that is parading in Serie A and counting the days to break a 33-year streak without winning a Scudetto would respond to an unprecedented opportunity, but that is not used to these continental battles.
"History awaits my team, but I don't think this creates added pressure
," the coach had warned.
Indeed, his men did not carry an extra weight.
Faced with an opponent who tried to put pressure on him from the start,
Napoli responded with his usual neat and patient handling of the ball
, also trusting that a lunge could come at any moment.
He did not lack reasons to believe it: in the seven previous games of this Champions League he had scored 22 goals, 11 of them in the three presentations in his fiefdom.
The blow came when the first half was ending and the visit did not worry goalkeeper Alex Meret: a cross from the right by Matteo Politano found the head of
Nigerian Victor Osimhen
.
It was the final sentence for the champion of the last Europa League, that he saw how his impotence won the battle against his urgency.
In addition, the relentless masked Osimhen (he has 4 goals in the Champions League and 19 in Serie A) and the Polish Piotr Zielinski, from a penalty, shaped the win.
In this way,
Napoli joined Inter and Milan, so Italy will have three representatives in the quarterfinals of this continental competition for the first time since 2006
(then it was Juventus, Milan and Inter).
A few hours before the match, the center of Naples had been the scene of clashes between police officers and
the 600 Eintracht fans who had traveled to Naples
despite the fact that the city authorities had prohibited the sale of tickets to fans residing in Germany. to avoid a repeat of the incidents that occurred before the first leg.
Eintracht Frankfurt supporters clashed with police officers in central Naples before the game.
Photo: Stringer / Reuters.
The Teutonic rioters smashed car windows,
set a police car on fire
and threw flares, chairs and other objects.
Their objective was to engage in hand-to-hand combat with their Neapolitan colleagues, but the uniformed officers prevented it, although they failed to prevent the locals from throwing stones and bottles at the buses carrying the visitors.
"It is an unacceptable situation, typical of a guerrilla combat
," lamented the mayor of Naples, Gaetano Manfredi.
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