De Bruyne and Højlund deliver more for country than for Napoli

Il Mattino traces Sunday's sports pages back to a tactical fact, not a match incident: the two most-anticipated players in the Napoli squad perform better away from Castel Volturno (the club's training ground) than inside head coach Allegri's system.

It's the same story for Højlund: Il Mattino compares Denmark's 4-2-3-1, where the striker touches far more balls inside the box, with the role he plays in Allegri's 4-3-3. The only precise figure the paper gives is the number of touches in the box; it doesn't elaborate further.

Both pieces sit against the backdrop of the national team: the Gazzetta dello Sport puts Mancini's Italy on its front page after the defeat to Belgium, with the coach reaching for a defiant line — 'We're better than this' — while the paper also makes room for Aleksander Ceferin's comments ahead of Euro 2032. The same Belgium, and the same De Bruyne, is the implicit link between the two stories, even though the Gazzetta never mentions Napoli.

None of Sunday's other reports touch the club directly: a narrow picture, with Il Mattino the only paper that really digs into the Napoli-Allegri question.

Our take

Sunday's coverage catches something real: with the team ninth in the table after the draw in Florence, asking why Napoli's two best players deliver less at the club than elsewhere is a fair question, not a stray statistic. But stopping at the numbers only tells half the story: it doesn't say who — Allegri or the squad built over the summer — should answer for that gap, or which choices on the pitch — formation, pecking order, minutes — are meant to close it before 10 October. If the papers leave it at the data, the uncomfortable question risks staying no more than hinted at.