MILAN: A first-half strike from Miralem Pjanic earned Roma a precious 1-0 win over Napoli to boost the capital side’s Champions League qualifying hopes on Saturday.
Rome remain in second place but have closed the gap — perhaps temporarily — on leaders Juventus to 11 points and pulled four points ahead of Lazio, their closest rivals for the second automatic Champions League qualifying spot.
Champions Juventus host Empoli in Sunday’s (tomorrow’s) late game while Lazio are away to Cagliari later in he day.
A lengthy winless run which virtually ended Roma’s title hopes came to an end two weeks ago when Daniele De Rossi struck to seal the points away to Cesena.
Rudi Garcia’s men made it two wins on the trot thanks to Pjanic’s 25th minute strike, although the hosts had ‘keeper Morgan De Sanctis to thank for a string of fine saves in both halves.
It was Roma’s first home win since a 4-2 defeat of Inter on November 30, and Garcia told Sky Sport: “Hats off to the lads, although we should have sewn it up by scoring a second goal early on.
“Now we’re nine points ahead of Napoli and we’ll be waiting for the rest of the results although the crucial thing for us was to win a second consecutive game.”
Napoli have now suffered three defeats in a five-game winless run that has dented their chances of Champions League football.
Benitez refused to point the finger of blame but admitted their bid to seize the league’s second automatic qualifying place was now “difficult”.
“With nine points (deficit) it’s now looking difficult, but we still have nine games to play,” said the Spaniard.
“If we play as we did today then I expect us to win many of those games.”
Garcia left Francesco Totti out of his matchday squad for the ‘Derby of the Sun’ and on the face of a determined all-round performance the hosts did
not miss their iconic captain.
Pjanic came closest to breaking the deadlock in the early stages with a free kick which flew just past Mariano Andujar’s far post but the Bosnian made no mistake five minutes later as Roma built on their momentum.
Pjanic was somehow left unmarked next to the penalty spot when he ran in to slot past Andujar following a nice combination of passes betweeen Juan Iturbe and Alessandro Florenzi.
At the other end De Sanctis was forced out of his goal to close down Jonathan De Guzman, the ‘keeper forced to slide tackle the Dutchman in a bid to clear for a throw-in.
Napoli’s chances in the opening half were few and far between but they spurned a great chance to level when Gonzalo Higuain cut back for De Guzman after De Sanctis had been lured out of his goal again.