Spalletti’s Napoli good enough without injured Osimhen

Luciano Spalletti said on Tuesday that Napoli will not miss Victor Osimhen in this week’s Champions League quarter-final, first leg with AC Milan after the Nigeria striker failed to recover from a thigh injury.

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Napoli’s star player and Serie A’s top scorer had been in a race against time to play in Wednesday’s fixture at the San Siro and was left out of the squad before Spalletti’s outfit travelled to Milan.

Napoli have been hammered at home by Milan and earned an unconvincing win at lowly Lecce since Osimhen picked his injury on international duty.

But Spalletti pointed to his team winning every game when Osimhen was last injured in the autumn as evidence the absence of 24-year-old will not hurt his 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 up to now 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.”

Taking Osimhen’s place could be Italy’s Giacomo Raspadori who did participate with the rest of the squad in Tuesday’s training.

He is Napoli’s only fit striker as Italy’s champions elect also announced on Tuesday that Giovanni Simeone had suffered a hamstring injury.

– Turkish coffee with Guardiola –

Simeone had come on for Raspadori as a second-half substitute in Napoli’s 2-1 win at Lecce on Friday before having to leave the field injured in the final 10 minutes.

“I need to assess Raspadori because he’s only had today for proper team training. We’ve got another half a day in which to see who will play in that position,” Spalletti said.

Spalletti also had time to launch a cheeky reply to Pep Guardiola, who on Monday joked to reporters that he did not want to speak about Napoli because Spalletti was “sensitive”.

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The 64-year-old was not impressed when, after Napoli beat Eintracht Frankfurt in the last 16, he was asked if he was flattered by Guardiola proclaiming his side the best in Europe, saying it was “a game that people play to put pressure on other teams”.

Spalletti jokingly stood up in honour of Guardiola, considered one of the all-time great coaches, while telling reporters 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 Champions League that’s another thing entirely.

“We’re not that team that has to worry about showing what it’s 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 with him about it (at the Champions League final in June) over a nice Turkish coffee.”