Victor Osimhen's Napoli lost 3-1 away to Barcelona on Tuesday evening in their 2023/24 UEFA Champions League Round of 16 second leg, suffering a 4-2 aggregate defeat.
The Partenopei seemed dazed by two quickfire goals from their hosts — Firmin Lopez and Joao Cancelo the scorers — before the 20-minute mark, but Amir Rrahmani appeared to drag them back into the tie by the end of the first half-hour.
The envisaged comeback never happened, though, as Robert Lewandowski made sure Barcelona reached the competition's quarter-finals for the first time in four years with the result-clinching strike late on.
Victor Osimhen no-show hurts Napoli
Napoli counted heavily on their star forwards to get the job done, but it was simply an impossible assignment on the turf of the five-time European champions.
Victor Osimhen squared up against a formidable Barcelona centre-back pairing of Ronald Araujo and the less experienced Pau Cubarsi (who, deservedly, was named Player of the Match).
The Super Eagles forward mustered just one shot on target, lost possession 11 times, won just one of six aerial contests and none of his four ground duels.
He'd have hoped for the sort of night he had in the first leg a fortnight ago at the Diego Armando Maradona Stadium, when he found the back of the net to cancel out Barcelona's lead and set Napoli up for a chance to grab a result in the reverse fixture.
Osimhen's failure to deliver on this occasion — it's now three games since he was on the score-sheet, despite returning from the 2024 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) in great form — didn't do his team any favours, yet interim Napoli boss Francesco Calzona believes the Nigerian was unfairly denied the chance to affect the game from the spot when Napoli felt they had a legitimate shout for a penalty.
The penalty claim
Osimhen had collected and controlled the ball expertly on his chest, having smartly beaten the offside trap, proceeding to advance in the Barcelona box with the intent to fashion out a scoring opportunity for himself or for someone else.
Cubarsi closed in quickly, though, and halted Osimhen's progress, but the manner of execution raised genuine doubts about whether the youngster had done so fairly.
It appeared he'd treaded on Osimhen's foot and tripped him, but Dutch referee Danny Makkelie didn't seem to think Cubarsi had done much wrong, refusing to award a penalty that Napoli felt they'd earned and with which the reigning Italian champions might have tied the score on the night and on aggregate.
“It seems a clear penalty to me from watching the footage on the TV and seeing it live,” Calzona said after the game.
“I don’t understand why they didn’t use VAR.”
Napoli had their chances, though, hence there's only so much blame Calzona and his team could place on the officials for the outcome of the game not going their way.
Hargreaves on the Osimhen incident
Former England and Manchester United midfielder Owen Hargreaves agrees with Makkelie's decison not to award a penalty to Napoli.
“I don't think it was. Maybe there is another angle where it might look like it but I thought it would have been soft.
“Osimhen has gone down a little bit sooner. There's contact initially but I thought he was with the best player on the pitch,” he told TNT Sports.
What next for Napoli?
The defeat means Napoli will miss out on reaching the last-eight of the Champions League for a second successive season. They'll also miss out on a generous financial reward promised the team by Napoli owner and president Aurelio De Laurentiis.
Already out of the Coppa Italia — also at the Round of 16 stage — Napoli will now focus on improving their lot in the league.
A return to the Champions League next season seems unlikely — so bad have they fallen off domestically — but a strong rally in the Serie A home stretch may secure a place in the admittedly less prestigious UEFA Europa/Conference League.
