Roma coach Rudi Garcia says Napoli are favourites

Rome, Oct 18 (IANS) AS Roma head coach Rudi Garcia has said Napoli start favourites when they meet Friday night in Italian Serie A action.

The Serie A leaders will host the second-placed Napoli and Garcia insisted that Napoli are the stronger side, reports Xinhua.

“Napoli are the favourites and they were built to win the Scudetto and to play in the Champions League,” he said. “They almost have two teams of the same level, but we’ll try to pull it off.”

His Napoli counterpart Rafael Benitez said the tie is of no extra significance and Garcia share his views.

“It will be a great match, but as we’re only in the eighth round of the league, there’s nothing at stake besides three points, ” he said.

“We will always play to win, be it at home or away. We’re not bothered who are the opponents in front of us. Of course, it all comes down to the match itself and we’ll see what happens on the field tomorrow,” he said.

All the teams in Italy have won the Scudetto after winning their first eight games of the campaign, but Garcia refused to talk about that.

“I’m not thinking about that. This is a question to try and get me talking about the Scudetto,” he said.

“Let’s look at La Liga: Atletico Madrid are winning eight games with no loss, yet we can’t call them favourites because Barcelona has the same number of points and the Blaugrana are still the favourites, alongside Real Madrid,” he said.

“We’ll see further down the line – our aim could be to come down the stretch with other teams at the top of the standings at the end of the season,” he said.