NAPLES, Italy, April 18 (Reuters) - Napoli's slim hopes of defending their Serie A league title all but ended with a 2-0 home defeat by Lazio on Saturday that left them 12 points adrift of leaders Inter Milan with five games left.
Inter, who beat Cagliari 3-0 on Friday, are on 78 points, with Napoli on 66. AC Milan are three points behind ahead of their game at Hellas Verona on Sunday and Lazio are ninth in the standings on 47 points.
The visitors took a sixth-minute lead through Matteo Cancellieri and Lazio could afford to spurn a penalty chance, with Vanja Milinkovic-Savic saving Mattia Zaccagni's spot kick, before Toma Basic doubled their advantage 12 minutes after the break.
Lazio, managed by former Napoli coach Maurizio Sarri, never looked like allowing a sluggish home side back into the game and came away victorious from the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona for the fourth successive season.
At the turn of the year, Serie A was enjoying a mouth-watering title race, with four points separating the top five sides.
As Inter forged full steam ahead, however, their rivals fell away and Antonio Conte's Napoli appeared to have little fight left as the Scudetto slipped out of reach, with last weekend's draw at Parma a blow from which they failed to recover.
"Today we were really flat, there was no mental energy," Napoli's Leonardo Spinazzola told DAZN.
"It wasn't physical fatigue, personally I think it was a reaction to last Sunday. We've spent the whole year pushing and chasing, and at Parma the flame went out."
Napoli were up against it early on when Cancellieri steered home a shot from the edge of the six-yard area after Kenneth Taylor's cutback from the byline.
The home side piled forward but without creating any clear-cut chances, and Stanislav Lobotka's foul on Tijjani Noslin gave Lazio a chance to double their lead from the penalty spot.
After his spot kick was saved, an off-balance Zaccagni blasted the rebound over with Cancellieri better placed to strike.
Milinkovic-Savic pulled off saves from Cancellieri and Nuno Tavares to keep the hosts in the game as they trudged off to boos from the home fans at the break.
After a scrappy opening to the second half, Lazio grabbed a second goal. Tavares stormed down the left wing and after Cancellieri missed a simple tap-in at the back post, the ball fell to the unmarked Basic who made no mistake.
Napoli substitute Alisson Santos clipped the outside of the post but the defending champions went down with a whimper in a game in which they failed to register a single shot on target.
(Reporting by Trevor Stynes, editing by Ed Osmond and Clare Fallon)
