One of the tastiest fixtures in this weekend’s edition of Serie A features this Sunday evening clash between 6th placed Napoli and 5th placed Roma as these two teams fight it out for an automatic spot in the Europa League.
Just three points separates Sunday’s hosts, Napoli, from their visitors prior to this crucial clash in the Italian top flight with not only an important three points at stake but also the right to enter the Europa League without having to endure a qualifier.
Napoli’s recent impressive five-match winning streak came to an end after losing 2-0 away from home at Atalanta on Thursday night, but the hosts will still feel they stand a decent chance of bouncing back with a win over their out of sorts opponents, Roma, as they too tasted defeat last time out in Serie A.
Napoli had earlier registered wins against Cagliari, Brescia, Torino, Hellas Verona and SPAL and the hosts will be hoping they can rekindle this kind of form this Sunday as they look to steal 5th place off Roma.
Onto Roma then, and their recent three-match winning streak was cut short by subsequent back-to-back defeats to AC Milan and most disappointing of all, a 2-0 loss at home to bottom half outfit, Udinese, which has resulted in the visitors imploding at just about the wrong time.
It’s hard to tell which Roma outfit is likely to take to the field in any given match as the visitors have won just four of their last 12 matches overall in the Italian top flight, and perhaps the pressure is starting to tell on the players as they produced an extremely lacklustre performance against Udinese.
In addition, Roma have now lost three of their last four matches away from home having suffered defeats at Sassuolo 4-2, Atalanta 2-1 and AC Milan 2-0 which is in stark contrast to the sort of form that the visitors were in earlier in the campaign as they’d lost just one of their first 10 away matches of the season.
Roma have also struggled to keep clean sheets on the road in recent times as four of their last five away matches have resulted in both teams scoring.
Arguably, Napoli appear to hold the edge over Roma here but both teams look vulnerable at the back which could result in both teams scoring in this one.