This Saturday night, Barcelona will host Napoli at the Camp Nou in the round of 16 second leg of the Champions League knockout stages. The first tie ended in a one-all draw between two evenly matched European titans and therefore, both have all to play in this battle in Catalonia.
For that reason, this tactical analysis will be a preview of that game and will tell just what kind of tactics we can expect from both sides tonight.
Lineup prediction
Quique Setién will be forced into a couple of changes of personnel, most notably because of the suspensions of both Sergio Busquets and Arturo Vidal. The former would have definitely been a part of the lineup had it not been for his suspension and the latter is also often a big part of the squad.
The rest of the team, luckily for the Catalans, is fit and ready to go. Marc-André ter Stegen will undoubtedly start between the sticks and will be covered by a quartet of – from right to left – Nélson Semedo, Gerard Piqué, Clément Lenglet and Jordi Alba. In midfield, Barcelona are likely to deploy Frenkie de Jong whos covering for Busquets, Ivan Rakitić and Sergi Roberto.
Up front, the trident of Lionel Messi, Luis Suárez and Antoine Grizemann will probably make its grand return. Setién could set his team up in a 4-3-1-2 diamond, which saw its debut against Villarreal in La Liga.
On the other hand, Gennaro Gattuso will be without the services of Kostas Manolas but other than that, and Nikola Maksimovićs doubtful appearance, the Italians are all set. Interestingly, Napoli don’t exactly have a no.1 goalkeeper and predicting who will start between the sticks for them is an unforgiving task. Still, David Ospina will likely get the nod in front of Alex Meret and the Italians will welcome Kalidou Koulibaly’s return with open hands.
The in-demand centre-back has missed the first leg and is bound to make their defence even sturdier than before. Alongside him, we’re likely to see Giovanni Di Lorenzo and then Mário Rui and Elseid Hysaj on their respective flanks.
In midfi
