Coach Luciano Spalletti said on Tuesday that Napoli had already won “important matches” without Victor Osimhen as the club prepares for the Champions League quarter‑final first leg against AC Milan. The Super Eagles striker has not recovered from a thigh injury and was omitted from the squad before Napoli travelled to the San Siro. Since Osimhen’s injury on international duty, Napoli have been hammered at home by Milan and have secured only an unconvincing win against lowly Lecce. Nevertheless, Spalletti pointed out that the team had won every game after the forward’s previous injury in the autumn, suggesting that his absence will not hurt the side.
“The strength of a team is never just the sum of its various parts. It’s the sum of all its qualities, how they co‑exist and the way the team works together,” Spalletti told reporters. “Our team has shown it can play regardless of the formation picked at the beginning of the match. We’re at this point because we’ve won important matches without Osimhen, so I expect the same thing.”
Italy’s Giacomo Raspadori could replace Osimhen; he participated in Tuesday’s training and is currently Napoli’s only fit striker. The club also announced that Giovanni Simeone suffered a hamstring injury. Raspadori came on for Simeone as a second‑half substitute in Napoli’s 2‑1 win at Lecce on Friday, but Simeone had to leave the field injured in the final ten minutes. “I need to assess Raspadori because he’s only had today for proper team training. We have another half a day to see who will play in that position,” Spalletti said.
Spalletti also seized the opportunity to reply to Pep Guardiola’s joke on Monday that he did not want to speak about Napoli because the Italian coach was “sensitive”. After Napoli’s victory over Eintracht Frankfurt in the last‑16, Guardiola had praised his side as the best in Europe, prompting Spalletti to remark that such comments are “a game that people play to put pressure on other teams”. He then stood up in honor of Guardiola, acknowledging him as one of the all‑time great coaches and saying he had “learned so many things from him”.
“For me, Guardiola is like Klopp or other great coaches… it’s an honour when a coach like Guardiola speaks well of Napoli and says nice things about how we play football,” Spalletti said. “If you then say that we can win the Champions League, that’s another thing entirely. We’re not a team that has to worry about showing what we’re made of in this competition. We’ve already shown enough, we’ve got the result we wanted and that’s made history for us. That said, I hope I can have a laugh with him about this at the Champions League final in June over a nice Turkish coffee.”
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