Steven Perez
Dailysports's expert
AC Milan
SSC Napoli
On April 12, San Siro (Milan) will host the first leg of the 1/4 finals of the Champions League, in which Milan will compete with Napoli. The battle will start at 21:00 CET.
Milan
The team still formally retains the Scudetto, those very honorary patches on the uniform that are allowed to be applied to the one who has won the Serie A. Nowadays, the task of the inner arena is much more modest, but very important – not to finish lower than the 4th place that is in other words to be represented in the Champions League next season. Well, April started with a 4-0 success in Naples, but how many misfires were there in 2023? One more happened in the match with Empoli – that game resulted in a goalless draw. At the same time, Stefano Pioli’s wards are excellent in the Champions League. The team that had been the fourth in its group in the previous draw (and had not qualified for a long time before that) was able not only to reach the play-offs, but also knocked out Tottenham there. Obviously, there is a strong desire to continue the European way.
Napoli
The club, to tell the truth, disgraced itself in a recent battle against “the Rossoneri”. Nevertheless, there happened no global changes because of that, except that the official celebrations have been shifted a little bit – in fact, the city has been already doing it with might and main, despite the conflicts between the fans and De Laurentiis. It seems that the players could not immediately tune in to such an atmosphere after a pause for the matches of the national teams. Although the struggle with Lecce brought a more or less positive performance and the opponent was “squeezed”, which resulted in a 2-1 victory. The main thing is that Spalletti united the team for the Champions League. There, however, everything has been great so far. Speaking about the group stage in the autumn, the Italian grandee calmed down only after 5 victories in a row. Moreover, it easily overcame Eintracht in the 1/8 confrontation, having decided everything already in the away match, despite the fact that Khvicha missed the penalty. This time, “the Red and Blacks” will definitely not be underestimated – on the contrary, Napoli is eager to take revenge.
The statistics of head-to-head matches
The trend has continued this month. That has been the sixth time in a row for the representatives of this pair, when the one who played away got the victory.
Predictions
Bookmakers consider the opponents to be equal. And the following battle will not be goalless – thus, we bet that the match will end with “total: over 2.0” (odd: 1.6).
