Tribal Football

Di Canio: Conte will get performances from Lukaku at Napoli - he's perfect

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Di Canio: Conte will get performances from Lukaku at Napoli - he's perfect
Di Canio: Conte will get performances from Lukaku at Napoli - he's perfectAction Plus
Former Lazio captain Paolo di Canio is convinced Napoli coach Antonio Conte will bring Romelu Lukaku back to his very best.

Lukaku scored and earned the man of the match award for victory at Cagliari yesterday.

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Di Canio told Sky Italia afterwards: "For Conte he is perfect, to lean on and so on. I observe, I don't watch. I say things, I don't speak. The performance, when you make assists and goals in an empty net, is still assists and goals, but in technical terms it is a 3. I point out that Conte makes him perform. Not much more, he makes him perform.

"In the last 3-4 years, nobody wanted him. Starting with Bayern Munich: they spent 100 million for (Harry) Kane and left him for free. If you want, say they are crazy. With Conte, very good, in this championship. It's very good. Even like this, even if he remains not in top form, he scores 16-17 goals. He scores them, for goodness sake.

"But we have to see what it moves. At Roma he moved zero. The year before sixth, the year with him zero. We have to see this year, he will certainly move, because from tenth position it is not far. But it is one thing to arrive seventh, another higher. There are many factors: not having the cups is useful."

On the Champions League, Di Canio says the workload for coaches will change.

"The new Champions League will shift: the work that coaches and technical staff will take on will be abnormal compared to the past. Before you had to study three teams, now eight. You come from bad games, you have to go and play in Manchester, then you face others: you have to play until the seventh or eighth, these are stresses that coaches must transmit effectively to the players."