Article by Aurelian Botezatu – Published on Sunday, 19 April 2026, 08:24 / Updated on Sunday, 19 April 2026 08:29
Napoli coach Antonio Conte has spoken about the collapse of the reigning champions, who were beaten 2-0 at home by Lazio.
Napoli remained 12 points behind the leader Inter, with 5 stages left to play in the current edition of the championship, and Antonio Conte blamed the mental shock suffered by his players last stage. Then, the reigning champion managed only a draw at Parma (1-1), while Inter won at Como (4-3).
Antonio Conte: “Everything always comes from the mind”
“What we saw today was definitely a lack of energy from the start. Everything always comes from the mind. Maybe we underestimated the reaction a little bit after the Parma draw, but look, it completely turned us on our backs.
It's inevitable when you're in a race. You are not allowed to make mistakes, but you hope that the team in front of you will make mistakes. The fact that we didn't manage to win in Parma and Inter won in Como basically destroyed us on all levels of mentality, even if the maths kept us alive,” explained Conte.
Antonio Conte: “I played very dirty in terms of quality”
The Italian technician also attributed some of the blame for the surprising failure against Lazio, who are 9th in the Serie A standings: “I don't know, maybe I should have intervened differently in terms of motivation, to stimulate my players a little. Today they were very exhausted, they had no energy.
I played very dirty qualitatively because I made so many mistakes. Although we had 70% possession, we had 8 shots on goal, zero on target and were 12-0 in corners.
We let Lazio all sit back and counter-attack and we weren't good at finding the lines of play we had set up anyway. It's not like Lazio surprised us. We knew they would play like that, but today we were very low on energy. We all struggled.”
Napoli – Lazio 0-2 match summary
Current standings in Serie A
