Defending champions Inter came from behind to beat Napoli 3-2 in a mouth-watering Serie A encounter at the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza. A hard-earned victory over the Partenopei has seen Simone Inzaghi’s said whittle down the gap on league leaders Milan and Napoli to only four points.
The southern visitors took an early lead through Piotr Zielinski’s screamer, but Inter replied within eight minutes, courtesy of Hakan Calhanoglu’s penalty. The Turkish playmaker went on to deliver an assist to Ivan Perisic, who completed the turnaround on the stroke of half-time.
Midway through the second half, the ultimate crowd-pleaser Lautaro Martinez slotted the ball past David Ospina to double Inter’s advantage. And when it looked like the Nerazzurri would cruise to an all-important derby triumph, Dries Mertens’ outrageous long-range effort brought Napoli back into the game in the 79th minute.
The all-time Partenopei top-scorer had a glorious opportunity to rescue a point for the visitors right at the death. However, his first-time attempt from the point-blank range went well over the crossbar. Therefore, Napoli wasted a rare chance to go alone at the Serie A summit following Milan’s 4-3 defeat at Fiorentina yesterday.
In the meantime, Inter took their unbeaten league run to five straight matches, pulling themselves back in the title race. Inzaghi, who knows how significant this triumph could be in his side’s efforts to defend the Serie A crown, waxed lyrical about the reigning champions’ performance.
“It was a key match and we have another one in three days’ time, but we’ll think that tomorrow,” he said in the aftermath, as relayed by Inter’s official website. “We’ve got a deserved win against an excellent team today.
“We conceded two goals playing out and then there were eight minutes of added time, but we managed to dig in and hold on. You expect that against Napoli, especially with the fatigue we accumulated on international duty.
“I had various players unavailable, [Edin] Dzeko was not at his best and [Joaquin] Correa felt a twinge. I only had [Martin] Satriano left and he did very well when he came on.“