Conte: ‘Napoli injury crisis with Chelsea just getting worse’

Antonio Conte warns Napoli have ‘only 13 outfield players available’ against Chelsea in the Champions League, so his main ask is to play with ‘heads held high.’

It kicks off at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona at 20.00 GMT (21.00 CET).

You can follow all the build-up and action as it happens from this game, Napoli-Chelsea, Borussia Dortmund-Inter and Union Saint-Gilloise-Atalanta on the Liveblog.

The Partenopei know they risk an early elimination from Europe, as they go into this final round of the league phase in 25th place.

“It is never easy when you get to the final round and qualification is up for grabs,” Conte told Amazon Prime Video Italia.

“We wasted a big opportunity in Copenhagen and today have to fight it out against a very strong team, during a moment where we are missing a lot of players.

“I told the lads to keep doing what we are doing, on a tactical level and in terms of mentality. These are chances for us to measure ourselves up against teams of this level, so despite all the absences and difficulties, we’ve got to give our all.

“That doesn’t mean victory is guaranteed, but we can leave the pitch with our heads held high, with a result that we hope can take us into the play-offs.”

Napoli scraped only two wins, two draws and three defeats, failing to get more than a 1-1 result away to 10-man FC Copenhagen last week.

That was followed by a painful 3-0 Serie A defeat to Juventus, as the injury crisis is really taking its toll.

David Neres, Matteo Politano, Vanja Milinkovic-Savic, Amir Rrahmani, Andre Frank Zambo Anguissa, Billy Gilmour and Kevin De Bruyne are all out of action.

“I’ve never seen a situation like this anywhere in the world, we have only 13 outfield players available, and Lukaku has at most 15 minutes in his legs,” continued Conte.

“This tells you the difficulty of the situation, but we’ve been going on like this for a long time. I thought it would get better with time, but it actually got worse, losing Neres, Rrahmani, Politano and Milinkovic-Savic.

“These are situations we must face with heads held high, with courage and hunger, trying to play our game without sitting back in defence.

“We must do what we’ve always done, try to attack them and hurt the team that is after all the reigning Club World Cup champion.

“We want to understand if we are on the right track and how much distance separates us from that level. We must forget about being Champions of Italy.”