Leicester City blew out a two-goal lead against Napoli in their Europa League opener at King Power Stadium on Thursday.
Ayoze Perez gave Leicester the lead after only nine minutes with a volley from Harvey Barnes cross.
Barnes scored himself in the 64th minute shortly after Patson Daka’s goal was ruled out.
It seemed like Brendan Rodgers’ team will close out the games but the Italian squad didn’t give up that easily.
The Nigerian international Victor Osimhen scored twice for the Italian team for the final score 2-2.
Rogers was disappointed with the final score but said that his young team will learn from this game.
“The crime isn’t giving away the two goals, the crime is if you don’t learn from it. I’m sure that is something this young team will do,” said Rodgers.
“I’m disappointed with the end result but there were some exciting and good moments,” added Rodgers. “The two goals are outstanding and the one that was disallowed was tight.”
“Maybe we tired a bit. There are things for us to improve on – like keeping the ball better for longer periods. If we did that, we wouldn’t tire so quickly.”
“The effort and mentality was good. It is a shame we couldn’t close it out.”
Napoli’s coach Luciano Spaletti was happy with the effort of his team and said that his players showed character.
“The team started the right way, then lost the ball a few too many times building out from the back and those proved costly,” Spalletti said.
“After that, we took the initiative throughout and it remained a perfectly balanced match.”
“We pushed even harder and got it back on level terms, because it frankly would’ve been unjust if we had lost this game. We saw today that this team has a strong character.”
Celtic also had a two-goal lead in Sevilla against Betis but couldn’t manage to hold on and suffered a 4-3 loss.
