Rafael Benitez believes Napoli shot themselves in the foot in losing to Athletic Bilbao and missing out on a Champions League group stage place.
Marek Hamsik opened the scoring at San Mames and put Napoli in front on aggregate, only for Aritz Aduriz to score twice and Ibai Gomez add a third and give Athletic a 3-1 win on the night, 4-2 on aggregate.
“We failed to manage the game well when we had it in hand,” Benitez said, according to Marca.
“The game was going very well at 0-1 and then we had two or three chances for the 0-2.
“We could see we could do damage, but we didn’t. Unfortunately the first and second errors have changed everything.”
Benitez added he was ‘disgusted’ by the mistakes made and added that the outcome would have gone the other way if the flaws had been eradicated.
“Everything would have been different if we had worked well in defence,” he continued.
“We didn’t handle it as we should and from there you have to analyse the mistakes and work on them for the future.”
