´It should hurt my players´ – Conte fumes at Napoli´s dropped Champions League points

A “hurt” Antonio Conte urged Napoli to be “angry at ourselves” after letting points slip in a costly Champions League draw with Copenhagen.

The reigning Serie A champions were held to a 1-1 away draw by the Danish side, who had Thomas Delaney sent off in the first half, with the result putting Napoli’s chances of qualifying for the play-offs in jeopardy.

Scott McTominay had opened the scoring shortly after Delaney’s red card, but Napoli failed to make the most of their numerical advantage, with Jordan Larsson scoring the rebound of his own saved penalty to earn Copenhagen a point.

As such, Napoli now sit 23rd in the 36-team table and could slip out of the play-off positions by the end of Wednesday’s fixtures, depending on the other results, leaving them with a mountain to climb in their final game against Chelsea.

“It hurts me, and it ought to hurt my players. We must be angry with ourselves,” Conte told Sky Sport Italia.

“We ought to be disappointed. The game was in the right condition to win and reach the play-offs.

“We might have a thousand excuses, but they don’t fit, because the match was going so well with those circumstances that we had to win.

“We showed for the fourth game in a row that we struggle. We were in total control, with 11 men against 10, so even if you’re missing 10 players and feeling fatigue, you have to win these games. You just have to.

“There is disappointment because we didn’t manage it, so evidently our level right now is not suited to this competition. We only have eight Champions League points; we’ve got to all accept the blame here, you’ve got to take home the result in a situation like this.

“There’s not much else to say, we just have to be angry with ourselves, because it was a golden opportunity, and perhaps we didn’t realise what was at stake.

“It was like we were riding a bike downhill and somehow managed to make it go uphill all by ourselves.”

Napoli failed to win a Champions League away game in which they led at half-time for the first time since November 2019 against Liverpool (also 1-1).

However, they had 19 shots, 55 touches in the opposition box, 70 final-third entries and bossed possession with 70.4% of the ball and were in a dominant position, with all of Copenhagen’s attempts coming after the hour-mark.

Conte has had to deal with an injury crisis and was missing a host of key players, including Matteo Politano, Amir Rrahmani, Kevin De Bruyne, Alex Meret, Frank Anguissa, Billy Guilmour and David Neres.

But the Italian says that is no excuse for the disappointing result as he questioned the attitude they showed at Parken.

“What I told the squad was that we had the game in hand, so it was important to score a second and third goal,” he said.

“I’ve been here many times, I know, in these games any incident can happen, and you are then left licking your wounds.

“Well, it happened, and now we lick our wounds. It’s disappointing, because for all the thousand excuses we could have, we were dominating this match and managed to make it difficult for ourselves. That is sad, as we work so hard.

“This has to annoy us, because if it doesn’t annoy us, then it means we don’t want to grow and improve. It’s not possible to let Copenhagen back into this game down to 10 men, understanding the importance of this match.

“We know what football is like, you have to be fired up and hungry from the first second to the last, otherwise you risk this.”