Matteo Politano struck an 79th-minute winner off the bench as Napoli beat AC Milan 1-0 at Stadio Diego Armando Maradona, lifting Napoli to second in Serie A and leaving Milan’s title push damaged, with the reigning champions still seven points behind leaders Inter with seven matches left.

The result extended Antonio Conte’s Serie A winning streak with Napoli to five games, a first for this campaign, echoing Conte’s previous run of seven league victories between December 2024 and January 2025, while the Opta supercomputer now gives Napoli a 4.4% chance of catching Inter at the top.

This 1-0 success also gave Conte back-to-back home league wins over Milan with Napoli for the first time, matching a previous sequence of three home victories recorded between August 2016 and August 2018, although this latest meeting offered limited attacking quality from both teams across the ninety minutes.

Napoli produced 10 attempts and generated an expected goals value of 0.75, hitting the target only three times, while Milan managed seven shots for a combined xG of 0.47, figures that underlined the tight nature of this Serie A contest and highlighted how one late moment decided the match.

The first half developed as a cautious struggle, with Youssouf Fofana testing Vanja Milinkovic-Savic early through a firm volley, before Leonardo Spinazzola went close at the opposite end when a curling strike from distance flew narrowly over the top-right corner, offering one of few real attacking threats before the interval.

Milan relied on Strahinja Pavlovic for an important contribution as a sharp recovery tackle stopped Giovane shooting, while Scott McTominay attempted an overhead kick that drifted wide, sequences that summed up a low-key opening period where both sides spent long spells cancelling each other out in midfield areas.

Napoli vs Milan: Second-half shifts and decisive combination

The rhythm changed after half-time as play opened up, with Giovane driving forward and unleashing a powerful left-footed effort that forced Milan captain Mike Maignan into a full-length save to the right, indicating that Napoli had started to find more space between the lines and around the Milan penalty area.

Conte then introduced Alisson Santos and Politano, and both substitutes shaped the decisive move, as Santos delivered a clever no-look pass to Mathias Olivera, whose cross was headed by Milan defender Koni De Winter towards the back post, where Politano finished first time at Maignan’s near post for three vital points, despite Santiago Gimenez later heading Zachary Athekame’s cross onto the roof of the net.