Napoli tightens grip on CL spot with Juventus defeat

Naples, Italy (SportsNetwork.com) - Napoli tightened its grip on a Champions League place on Sunday after topping league-leaders Juventus, 2-0, at the Stadio San Paolo.

With fourth-place Fiorentina finishing scoreless against Sampdoria on Sunday, Napoli's victory sees the club move 12 points ahead of La Viola for the final Champions League spot from Serie A.

The hosts had the better of the play early on and collected the first goal of the match in the 37th minute through Jose Maria Callejon. Napoli then put the game away nine minutes from time when the club caught Juve on the counter attack.

Goran Pandev set the scoring play in motion with a pinpoint through ball to Dries Mertens, who slid it into the bottom left corner past Juve goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon.

Despite the defeat, Juventus remains on pace for a third straight league title as the Old Lady remains on top of Serie A with 81 points, 11 ahead of second- place Roma with seven games to play.

Also in Serie A on Sunday, Roma earned a fourth consecutive victory in league play with a comfortable 2-0 win over relegation-battling Sassuolo at the Stadio Citta del Tricolore.

Mattia Destro got the visitors off to a flying start with a goal in the 16th minute and Roma didn't look back. Sassuolo failed to create many scoring opportunities and the visitors added a second goal deep in stoppage time to wrap up the points.

Luca Toni scored a pair of late second-half goals and Marco Donadel added a third goal as 10-man Hellas Verona earned a 3-0 victory over Genoa, while Antonio Candreva scored thee minutes into second-half stoppage time to hand Lazio the points in a wild 3-2 victory over Parma.

Omar El Kaddouri and Alessio Cerci scored on either side of the intermission to see Torino come away with a 2-1 result over Cagliari, while Sunday's final fixture saw Sampdoria and Fiorentina play to a scoreless draw at the Stadio Luigi Ferraris.