This Tuesday night, Napoli will host Barcelona in the round of 16 of the 2019/20 Champions League campaign. The Italian team had a tough start to life with Gennaro Gattuso at the helm but are quickly catching form just in time to host the La Liga leaders at their home ground and make their lives rather difficult.
Even though Barcelona are the slight favourites, this tactical analysis preview will look to give you both teams tactics and use analysis in order to determine where their chances in the clash might lie.
Napoli’s defensive tactics
Even though Napoli generally enjoy more possession than their opposition in Serie A (55.35%), it’s fairly safe to assume that Barcelona will likely have more of the ball come Tuesday night. For that reason, this might be something new for Rino and his troops and he will have to adapt his tactics accordingly.
Generally speaking, however, Napoli tend to deploy a 4-4-2 defensive system when facing a team that’s building up from the back and that’s exactly what we can expect Barcelona to do. The Italians will then likely set up in a mid-block that would prioritise a compact formation and keep all central penetration to a minimum.
We’ve seen them do that well against bigger teams such as Juventus and Inter Milan in the past – the main aspect will be to keep track of the opposition’s key members and keep them tightly man-marked, as they did with the Nerazzurri in the image below.
Notice how there’s basically no way through the middle of the pitch as Antonio Conte’s men have no open channels towards their creative sparks in the opposition’s half. Doing this efficiently will be crucial for Napoli if they want to keep Barcelona’s midfielders quiet throughout the game.
But this is also where certain problems may arise for the Italians. Even though they can deploy a tight and compact block that would, in theory, send Barcelona out wide where they can be either collapsed upon or forced into a crossing situation, they have struggled to maintain their defensive solidity under Gattuso in 2019/20.
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