Napoli 1-0 Roma: Lukaku scores a goal, Ranieri’s side suffer third league defeat

Claudio Ranieri's return to Roma was spoiled by Romelu Lukaku, whose goal against his old club sealed a 1-0 win for Napoli.

Series A 2024/2025

1-0

• Lukaku (54')

Competition events

Ranieri was appointed Roma boss during the international break, with the 73-year-old retiring to take charge of the club for a third time.

Yet it was ex-Roma striker Lukaku who decided Sunday's match at Stadio Diego Armando Maradona, with his 54th-minute try sending Antonio Conte's side back to the top of Serie A.

Lukaku was in a good position to convert from Giovanni Di Lorenzo's cuts, netting his fifth Serie A goal of the season.

Roma, who had just two tries and scored just 0.07 expected goals (xG) in the first half, woke up after Lukaku's goal, with Artem Dovbyk firing a header from a free-kick onto the woodwork minutes later, but the comeback attempts of visitors proved fruitless.

Ranieri's next task is to rally his troops for a Europa League match against Tottenham on Thursday.

6/7 – Napoli won six or more of their first seven home games in Serie A for the third time in the last four Italian top-flight campaigns (after 2021/22 and 2022/23): as often as in the previous 25 seasons in the tournament . Fortress.

There was no sign of an immediate recovery for 12th-place Roma if they were hoping for a new coach.

Roma ended the first half with fewer than 70 successful passes (68). It is the first time since 2004-2005 that there have been so few successful passes in the first half of a league match.

With just three wins to their name in the league, they have won fewer than four games in their first thirteen Serie A games (also three) for the first time since the 1978/79 season.

And of course it had to be Lukaku, who was in charge last season, who delivered the hammer blow. The Belgium international has been involved in nine goals in Serie A this season (five goals, four assists). Only his former Everton clubmate Ademola Lookman, now a star at Atalanta, has contributed more goals in the competition (seven goals, four assists).

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54' GOAL! Napoli 1-0 Roma (Romelu Lukaku)

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Setups

Napoli XI: Lukaku, Di Lorenzo, Lobotka, Politano, Rrahmani, Meret, Anguissa, M.Olivera, Buongiorno, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, McTominay

Subs: Juan, Spinazzola, G. Simeone, Nikita Contini, Pasquale Mazzocchi, Neres, Giacomo Raspadori, Michael Folorunsho, Alessio Zerbin, Cyril Ngonge, Gilmour, Elia Caprile, Rafa Marín

Roma

Subs: Hummels, Ryan, Paredes, Dybala, Enzo Le Fée, Nicola Zalewski, Saud Abdulhamid, Samuel Dahl, Tommaso Baldanzi, Matías Soulé, Renato Marin, Buba Sangaré