McTominay’s form cools Conte’s fire after tempestuous week for Napoli | Nicky Bandini

Scott McTominay could have been forgiven for a moment of self-pity after Napoli’s 6-2 defeat to PSV in the Champions League last week, a night when he scored twice and still wound up on the wrong end of a historic shellacking. Instead, he was the voice of reason.

While Antonio Conte debuted a new line of complaint, putting aside a career’s worth of laments about employers failing to back him in the transfer market to this time protest that Napoli had bought him too many new players, McTominay said simply: “It’s football. You have to take it on the chin.”

“There’s always another game coming quick,” he continued. It just so happened that the next one, four days later, would be at home to the Inter side who Napoli pipped to the Serie A title last year.

The timing was inauspicious. Napoli had lost their previous game, against Torino, as well. The defending champions were having a wobble, whereas Inter arrived on the back of seven consecutive league wins. As Conte would later put it: “They were coming here to kill us off.”

An apt metaphor for the opening exchanges. Inter were hunting in packs, isolating Napoli’s defenders as they sought to play out from the back. Nicolò Barella pounced on Leonardo Spinazzola, dispossessing him and sending the ball to Lautaro Martínez, whose first-time shot demanded a save from Vanja Milinkovic-Savic at the near post.

Inter’s tails were up, but they could not draw blood. Instead, they were stung by a bad refereeing decision at the other end. Frank Anguissa’s artful flick released Giovanni Di Lorenzo into the area, but the latter player was put under pressure by Henrikh Mkhitaryan before being dispossessed by Francesco Acerbi. The referee, Maurizio Mariani, well positioned, saw no infringement. Play continued back up towards halfway.

But the linesman Daniele Bindoni believed he had seen Mkhitaryan impede Di Lorenzo. Replays suggested this was, at best, six of one and half a dozen of the other, but Mariani accepted his assistant’s verdict and pointed to the spot. Italy’s refereeing designator, Gianluca Rocchi, had spoken again last week about wanting to see fewer “rigorini” – borderline penalties – awarded, yet here was another in a high-profile game.

Kevin De Bruyne converted, then immediately clutched his right hamstring. He left the pitch in tears, Napoli’s delight made bittersweet. Inter hit the post twice in the remaining minutes before the interval. Despite trailing, they had been the better team.

Kevin De Bruyne came off four minutes after converting his penalty and reaggravating a hamstring injury he had surgery on in 2023. Photograph: Andrea Staccioli/Insidefoto/Shutterstock

Did the half-time pause undo them, allowing them time to stew over the penalty injustice? Inter’s president, Beppe Marotta, would later say that the decision “instilled a bitterness” in the players. “It impacted our approach in the second half.”

Or maybe he was rationalising after the event. Because another event that shaped the game was the sensational goal scored by McTominay shortly after play resumed.

Inter’s defence was complicit, allowing the Scot to run behind them on to a cross-field pass from Spinazzola. Still, by the time the ball came down, spinning awkwardly away from goal outside the box, the threat did not seem so great. Until he smashed it first-time back across his body and into the bottom corner of the net.

An outrageous finish, straight from the pages of Roy of the Rovers – if you are old enough (unlike McTominay) to remember 1990s footballing comic book heroes. Another reminder of why he was named Serie A’s Most Valuable Player last season.

He had made a slower start to this campaign. McTominay scored Napoli’s first goal on the opening weekend, away to Sassuolo, but had not found the net again for his club until last week’s defeat to PSV. He has been starting in a wider position since De Bruyne’s arrival, playing on the left of a 4-1-4-1 instead of forming part of a midfield three.

That this latest goal should arrive after the Belgian left the pitch will only fuel debates about whether Napoli’s headline summer signing has hindered their most important player. For better or worse, though, the dilemma is likely to be set aside now for some time. De Bruyne underwent surgery on his right hamstring in 2023 but has continued to suffer injuries to that muscle since, and there were reports on Monday that a further operation may now be required.

McTominay’s goal was not the final word on Saturday. Inter pulled one back within five minutes, winning a penalty of their own when Alessandro Buongiorno handballed. Hakan Calhanoglu buried the spot-kick, grabbed the ball and sprinted back toward halfway.

With cool heads, they might have turned this game around. But Inter had already lost theirs. A confrontation between Denzel Dumfries and the Napoli substitute Mathías Olivera escalated when Conte got involved, leading others to join in. The scuffle ended with Martínez throwing crude insults at his former manager and getting similar in return.

Anger boiled over on the touchline as Antonio Conte (far right) could not help but exchange words with his former player Lautaro Martínez (far left) in Napoli’s win. Photograph: Piccirillo/Shutterstock

Meanwhile, Napoli stayed on mission. From a throw-in at halfway, David Neres served a one-touch pass to Anguissa, who dribbled 30 yards, sidestepped two defenders and then wrongfooted everyone again with his finish. Another brilliant goal by a player whose centrality to Napoli’s success has not always received enough recognition.

A 3-1 win delivered Napoli back to the top of the table, after Milan’s surprising draw at home to last-placed Pisa on Friday. Roma pulled level on 18 points after they beat Sassuolo on Sunday.

The title race, for now, looks wide open, but this was a statement result for Napoli against opponents who Conte described as “the strongest team in the league”. On paper, and on the pitch, Inter had looked better in the early part of this season. But this defeat – even affected by a terrible refereeing decision – felt like a weighty one in what is becoming an increasingly bitter rivalry.

Conte was sure to make the most of his moment, needling Inter for sending Marotta out to speak to the press afterwards. “Leave these things to those who participated in the match,” he said. “I have always defended myself. I have never asked my presidents to play ‘dad’.”

Something of a historical rewrite there, from a man who complained several times while at Inter that he would like directors to come out and speak to the press more. Maybe that too is intended, words chosen to get a reaction, another chance to get under his former club’s skin. Or perhaps Conte just loves a fight. He and Martínez famously fell out on the way to winning a league title together at Inter, before Romelu Lukaku got them together with some boxing gloves to throw a few fake punches and then hug it all out.

He is hardly about to change his ways now, 20 years into a coaching career that has brought him six league titles, spread across four clubs and two different countries. The great blessing for Conte at Napoli is that his fire can be balanced on the pitch by McTominay’s ice.

“We had a great reaction after the Champions League defeat,” said the player on Saturday. “This was a great night. Top. And now what we need is continuity.”