Barcelona 1 – 1 Napoli
Dries Mertens curled in from 18 yards in the first half to become Napoli’s joint top scorer of all-time, level with Marek Hamsik on 121 goals. Barcelona grabbed an away goal as they came from behind to draw against Napoli in the first leg of their Champions League last-16 tie in Italy.
But Barcelona equalised after 57 minutes when Antoine Griezmann scored from Nelson Semedo’s low cross. The visitors ended the game with 10 men as Arturo Vidal was sent off late on.
In the 89th minute, he fouled Fabian Ruiz, but then, after the Napoli man reacted, Vidal pushed his head into the midfielder’s face and was shown two yellow cards in quick succession.
The return match takes place at the Nou Camp on Wednesday, 18 March, although the Spanish La Liga leaders will also be without suspended midfielder Sergio Busquets as he picked up his third booking of this season’s tournament.
It came early in the second half when, with a foot raised, he caught Mertens, who limped off and had to be replaced shortly afterwards.
Barcelona had an injury worry of their own as centre-half Gerard Pique hobbled off in added time at the end of the match with an ankle injury.
Napoli had chances to go into the second leg in Spain with the lead but visiting goalkeeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen made two fine saves, denying Lorenzo Insigne and then Jose Callejon.
Source – BBC News
In other news – Its official: Warriors to play home matches in foreign countries as CAF bans Zim stadiums
Its official: Warriors to play home matches in foreign countries as CAF bans Zim stadiums. This means that the Warriors will have to find an alternative venue for their match against Algeria.
CAF has advised Zimbabwe to ‘select homologated stadiums in countries of other CAF members’ for the match which is scheduled for the 29th of March 2020. iHarare has learned that the Confederation of African Football (CAF) has banned Zimbabwe’s national soccer teams from…continue reading.
