The Japan Times - Napoli miss out on Serie A summit, troubled Juve hammered by Fiorentina

Antonio Conte's Napoli are level on 61 points with reigning champions Inter Milan after a largely lacklustre performance which with better finishing would have still been enough for victory on the Venetian Lagoon.

Giacomo Raspadori smacked a shot off the post in the fifth minute at the Stadio Pier Luigi Penzo while Scott McTominay, Giovanni Di Lorenzo and Romelu Lukaku were all denied by smart goalkeeping from Ionut Radu.

And substitute Giovanni Simeone wasted a chance to snatch the three points for Napoli in stoppage time when he blasted over Noah Okafor's pinpoint cross from close range.

Those misses left Napoli with five draws from their last seven league matches, form which has compromised their bid for a second league crown in three seasons.

"I don't think they caused us any problems. There was one team on the pitch that was in charge of the game, and that was us," said Conte to DAZN.

"We did what we were supposed to do today, but when you create so many chances you have to score. And the opportunities they had mostly came from our own errors."

Venezia's performance belied their position in the relegation zone, five points behind Parma who sit just outside the bottom three and drew 1-1 at Monza on Saturday.

The hosts should have scored three minutes before the break when Napoli goalkeeper Alex Meret charged off his line to deny Kike Perez before Amir Rrahmani's desperate goalline clearance from Daniel Fila's follow-up.

Napoli's draw presents Atalanta with a great opportunity to draw level with the leading duo in their mouth-watering clash with Inter later on Sunday, as an exciting three-way race for the Scudetto heads towards its climax.

Atalanta sit three points off the pace in third as they seek a first home win in Serie A since before Christmas and their first ever league title.

- Juve crisis -

Juventus and Thiago Motta are in deep trouble after a second heavy defeat is as many weeks, with coach Motta looking increasingly unlikely to still be in charge come the start of next season.

The Turin giants barely laid a glove on eighth-placed Fiorentina who ran riot in front of delighted supporters -- including iconic former striker Gabriel Batistuta -- at the Stadio Artemio Franchi.

Robin Gosens and Rolando Mandragora put Fiorentina two ahead within 18 minutes before Albert Gudmundsson made sure of the points seven minutes after the break with a thunderous shot of which Batistuta himself would have been proud.

Nicolo Fagioli, who was unloaded by Juve earlier this year, set up Mandragora and Gudmundsson's efforts while the excellent Moise Kean thought he had embarrassed his old club just before the hour mark before his strike was ruled out for offside.

The nature of Sunday's defeat and the fact it came after last weekend's four-goal home hammering by Atalanta makes Motta's position precarious, with Italian media reporting ahead of the match that he could be sacked if Juve were to be beat in Florence.

To make matters worse for Motta his old team Bologna have moved one point above his current club into fourth place after a thumping 5-0 win over sixth-placed Lazio, who are only a point behind Juve.

Motta insisted on Saturday that he had the full backing of the Juve hierarchy but Roberto Mancini is reportedly one of the contenders to replace him if the club makes the rare decision to sack their coach before the end of the current campaign.

Roma are also in the hunt for the Champions League after a narrow 1-0 win over Cagliari in Rome which eased the pain of being dumped out of the Europa League by Athletic Bilbao.

H.Hayashi--JT