Napoli beat Frosinone 3-0 as De Bruyne and Lang settle it inside half an hour

Napoli wasted no time. Höjlund hit the bar with a header in the 3rd minute, an early sign the team meant to grab the game by the throat. The breakthrough came in the 29th minute: a penalty, converted by De Bruyne to put Napoli ahead. Three minutes later Lang made it 2-0. By the half-hour mark the contest was already decided, and Frosinone were left chasing a heavy scoreline with the game barely under way.

The final numbers tell the story of a one-sided night on quality: seven shots on target for Napoli against just one for Frosinone, who managed 17 shots in total without ever troubling the goal with real precision. Late on came bookings for Rrahmani, in the 80th minute, and Badiashile, in the 85th — footnotes on a match whose script was never really in doubt.

A clean 3-0 does not by itself end the debate of recent weeks over Napoli's football and over Allegri: supporters are still asking for more, and a comfortable win over lower-table opposition is not enough to close that down. It remains the story of a single night, in the sixth round of a season still too short to draw conclusions from. In three days, on Tuesday, Napoli switch scenery entirely to face Villarreal in the Champions League — a different story, with different rules.