Napoli dominate but Venezia hold on for 1-0 win

Napoli dominated this game from start to finish and still lost. Twenty-nine shots to nine, ten on target to four, twelve corners to none — and still the scoreline reads 1-0 to Venezia. That tells you where the game was actually lost: not in creating chances, but in finishing them.

Allegri's response was immediate and drastic. In the 54th minute he sent on both De Bruyne and Höjlund, with Santos following a minute later. Three changes inside sixty seconds is not routine squad management — it was a sign that the side on the pitch was not coping and needed a major fix, fast.

Napoli pushed even higher up the pitch and brought on Politano in the 63rd minute, continuing to lay siege to the Venezia box. But the wall held. Nine saves from the Venezia goalkeeper, Stankovic, turned his goal into a fortress, while at the other end Meret was barely called into action.

The moment that mattered most came in the 68th minute: a penalty for Napoli, and De Bruyne missed it. It was the clearest chance of the whole match, the one that would have levelled the score with more than twenty minutes still to play, and it went begging. From then on, not even the final substitution — Olivera, on in the 82nd minute — could prise the game back open. Venezia, forced to defend for their lives time and again, saw it through to the end.

Napoli are left with 10 points from 7 games and ninth place, with ground to make up on the teams above them. A side that takes 29 shots and fails to score raises a question that is not about effort — that much was visible — but about the ability to turn a huge amount of play into goals, the kind of afternoon that would have been enough against most other defences. It is a question about the head coach's choices as much as about the effectiveness of the players on the pitch, and after a run of results that is convincing no one, it is fair for supporters to ask it in that tone.