12 January 2023
Juventus open Serie A Matchday 18 on Friday with an away match at the league leaders, Napoli.
With a seven-point advantage over Juve and Milan, tied in second place, the Partenopei have already assured themselves the title of Winter Champions with two matches to play before the half-way point of the season.
For the Neapolitan outfit it is the first home game of 2023, having won nine consecutive matches in all competitions at the Diego Maradona Stadium.
THE SEASON SO FAR
Napoli have been sitting alone at the summit of the Serie A standings since Matchday 9, having slipped out of the top three just once - after drawing with Lecce on Matchday 4, the only points dropped at home this campaign.
The Partenopei have won 14 and drawn two of their 17 league matches so far, scoring 39 goals, conceding 13.
No team has scored more or has a better goal difference.
Napoli have earned 44 points this season. On all four previous occasions in the era of three points for a win in which a team has obtained at least as many points after 17 Serie A games, they have always gone on to be crowned champions.
However, the team coached by Luciano Spalletti suffered their first domestic setback in the opening fixture of 2023, at Inter. The Nerazzurri also inflicted the first league loss on Napoli last season, when Spallettii's debut campaign with the side from Campania ended with a third-place finish.
The summer transfer campaign signalled an end of an era for Napoli with long-term stalwarts Lorenzo Insigne, Dries Mertens and Kalidou Koulibaly among the many departees, replaced by Giacomo Raspadori, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Kim Min-Jae. The Georgian winger and South Korean central defender settled in immediately to their new surroundings in their debut Serie A season.
However, another player has been even more important to Napoli's impressive start.
THE PLAYER TO KEEP AN EYE ON: VICTOR OSIMHEN
The Napoli striker is the Serie A top scorer on 10 goals from just 13 appearances. What's more, Victor Osimhen has also contributed two assists to make him the league's most valuable player per match.
In his third campaign in Italy the Nigerian has already matched his tally from his debut season and is four goals short of his total last year.
The 24-year-old scored his first Serie A hat-trick in a 4-0 win over Sassuolo in late October, one of four games in a row in which he found the net after returning from a month out due to injury.
Osimhen broke the deadlock in the team's most recent win, a 2-0 victory at Sampdoria last weekend, to then provoke the sending off of Tomas Rincon, when the midfielder chopped down the centre forward bearing in on goal.
In his three appearances against the Bianconeri, the forward has yet to find the net.
