Juventus and Napoli played out a goalless draw on Saturday as two teams tipped to challenge for the Serie A title cancelled each other out on Antonio Conte’s return to his old stomping ground.
A fiercely contested, but far from exciting contest at the Allianz Stadium in Turin ended with Juventus maintaining their unbeaten start to life under new coach Thiago Motta.
Juve are yet to concede in Serie A this season but their third consecutive league stalemate denied them top spot, currently held by local rivals Torino following their 3-2 win at Verona on Friday.
Torino are a point ahead of Udinese, who are at Roma on Sunday, and third-placed Napoli, while Juve are a further point back in fourth.
“Without goals, it is impossible to win games,” said a blunt Weston McKennie.
Motta drew surprised reactions when he substituted Dusan Vlahovic at half-time for Timonthy Weah, the Serbia striker taken off purely for tactical reasons.
Vlahovic hasn’t scored in five of his six appearances this for Juve season and only touched the ball six times in the first half in another frustrating display.
“It’s not like he comes to the game and says I won’t score today,” added McKennie.
“We have to keep his head up, remind him he’s an important player for us and the goals will come eventually.”
Napoli coach Conte, a winner of eight Serie A titles and the 1996 Champions League in 16 years with Juve as player and coach, was reserved a low-key welcome by his former supporters.
Conte had been back to Turin as Inter Milan coach but during the Covid-19 pandemic when fans were not present in the stadium.
Stalemate
And his team did a fine job of shutting the match down while also creating the two best chances of an underwhelming match either side of half-time, with Michele Di Gregorio pulling off a super save from Matteo Politano who also slammed over shortly after the break.
“I was concerned about the defence tonight but they were excellent tonight,” Conte told DAZN.
“We were at Juventus, who finished 18 points ahead of us last season and are in the Champion League. I asked the team to carry on their good form and I think they played well.
“We need to be better when we have the ball in certain areas though, we could have taken better advantage of some of the situations we created.”
Before kick-off fans remembered Toto Schillaci, the former Juve striker who became a national hero by scoring six times for Italy at the 1990 World Cup.
Schillaci died on Wednesday at the age of 59 after suffering from bowel cancer.
That moment of remembrance was unfortunately ruined by some Napoli supporters in the away end, who were loudly whistled by home supporters after yelling out insults.
There was little goalmouth action once the match got underway, with the first real chance not coming until stoppage time when Di Gregorio did brilliantly to tip away Politano’s free-kick as it whizzed past Romelu Lukaku’s head.
Politano was in the thick of it again nine minutes after the break when he cut inside and fizzed a curling shot just over the bar.
That was the last major incident of a match as both teams seemed happy to settle with a draw rather than risk defeat to a direct rival so early in the season.
Earlier, Venezia won their first match since being promoted, claiming a 2-0 home win over Genoa.
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