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This has the feeling of a formality, but Napoli will still need to be focused and effective in this match. Despite the beatdown they delivered to Trabzonspor in Turkey last week, they need to be careful not to get complacent and risk the same thing happening to them at home. Still, it shouldn't take much to win this tie. 4-0 is awfully hard to overcome, after all.
Avoiding Embarassment
There's no question about it: Trabzonspor got curb-stomped in the first leg of this tie. They were hoping to use their home advantage in Turkey to try to eke any advantage they could heading in to the second leg, and instead got played off the pitch to the tune of a 4-0 drubbing. They rarely even looked competitive in the match, and now they have to find any silver lining they can in the second leg.
Ersun Yanal's club will have to try to find that consolation without a few key players, though. Mehemt Ekici returns from his first-leg suspension, but defender Essaid Belkalem misses out with a hamstring injury, and Jose Bosingwa and Yusuf Erdogan are both doubts with leg injuries of their own.
No One Get Hurt, Please
As long as Napoli don't fall asleep for 90 minutes, this tie is pretty much in the bag. Of course, maintaining focus in this kind of scenario can be difficult, so we probably shouldn't expect perfection in this match. Still, an early goal or two and this one can be put to bed, and even with a lineup of mostly reserves, Napoli are well capable of pulling this off.
Rafael Cabral is expected to be reintroduced to the lineup, hoping to show confidence after a couple miscues in his last two matches sent him to the bench. Expect a heavily-rotated squad ahead of him, though, including minutes for rarely-used defenders Henrique Buss and Giandomenico Mesto, as well as recently out-of-favor midfielders Jorginho and Gokhan Inler.
Projected Lineups Sure To Be Wrong
Napoli: Rafael; Mesto, Henrique, Britos, Ghoulam; Inler, Jorginho; Gabbiadini, De Guzman, Mertens; Higuain
Trabzonspor: Arikan; Bosingwa, Akbas, Demir, Nizam; Medjani, Dursun; Yilmaz, Ekici, Erdogan; Cardozo
At a glance
Trabzonspor: 5th in SuperLig; 8W 10D 3L; League Form: DWDWWD
Napoli: 3rd in Serie A; 13W 6D 5L; League Form: WLWWWW
Last Time Out: Trabzonspor 0-4 Napoli
You remember how this went: Napoli knocked Trabzonspor down and didn't let them up or stop kicking them until the final whistle blew. It was a start-to-stop domination, and it was much needed after a shock loss in the league the weekend before. The full recap is here.
Watch It
TV: Premium Calcio 1, Premium Calcio 2 HD (Italy), Smart Spor (Turkey)
Online: Fox Soccer 2GO, ESPN3 (U.S.), Sportsnet World Now (Canada), Premium Play (Italy)
There is no live TV viewing option in the U.S., Canada, or U.K. for this match. Other live viewing options can be found here, and as always, we'll have a match thread live here for discussion of the game at hand. You can also follow along with us live on Twitter, and we'll have updates of the most important events on our Facebook page, which you should definitely like.