{"id":193973,"date":"2025-10-06T20:17:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T20:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/193973\/"},"modified":"2025-10-06T20:17:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T20:17:08","slug":"hojlund-grateful-for-legend-de-bruynes-assists-in-napoli-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/193973\/","title":{"rendered":"H\u00f8jlund grateful for ‘legend’ De Bruyne’s assists in Napoli win"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rasmus H\u00f8jlund<\/a> said he was grateful to be on the same team as Kevin De Bruyne<\/a> after the on-loan Manchester United<\/a> striker scored twice off assists from the former Manchester City<\/a> midfielder in Napoli<\/a>‘s 2-1 win<\/a> over Sporting CP<\/a>.<\/p>\n

De Bruyne’s perfectly placed through ball set up H\u00f8jlund’s opener for Napoli in Wednesday’s Champions League clash. After Colombian forward Luis Su\u00e1rez<\/a> equalised from the penalty spot, De Bruyne then also provided the cross for H\u00f8jlund’s header that restored Napoli’s advantage in the second half.<\/p>\n

“Kevin is a legend of the sport,” H\u00f8jlund said. “For me, it’s just every time he has the ball, go find some space. I’m so grateful to play with a player like this.”<\/p>\n

– Conte plays down De Bruyne substitution flashpoint<\/a>
– Champions League recap: PSG grabs late winner vs. Bar\u00e7a<\/a><\/p>\n

Napoli’s second goal was similar to many goals that De Bruyne set up for Erling Haaland<\/a> during his trophy-laden years with Man City.<\/p>\n

“They’re quite similar,” De Bruyne said of Haaland and H\u00f8jlund. “Erling is Erling and what he’s done in his career is unbelievable. They both like to attack the space. Erling probably a little bit more. Rasmus wants to come [meet the ball] sometimes.”<\/p>\n

Rasmus H\u00f8jlund and Kevin De Bruyne connected on both goals in Napoli’s win over Sporting CP.\u00a0Giuseppe Maffia\/NurPhoto via Getty Images<\/p>\n

While H\u00f8jlund struggled to find the net in two seasons at Man United following a big-money transfer from Atalanta<\/a>, he has now scored three goals in five appearances since his loan move to Napoli.<\/p>\n

It also continued an impressive record in the Champions League for the Danish international, who now has scored seven goals in eight appearances in Europe’s top competition.<\/p>\n

De Bruyne, meanwhile, now has 27 career assists in the Champions League, as he moved past Zinedine Zidane and Andres Iniesta into fifth place on the all-time list for midfielders, trailing only Ryan Giggs (41), \u00c1ngel Di Mar\u00eda<\/a> (38), David Beckham (36) and Xavi (31).<\/p>\n

The Belgium<\/a> international has now scored or assisted five goals in seven games since joining Serie A<\/a> champions Napoli in June after 10 seasons at City.<\/p>\n

Wednesday’s performance was also the perfect response to some controversy over his reaction to a weekend substitution.<\/p>\n

De Bruyne didn’t hide his dismay when he was taken off during a loss at AC Milan<\/a> on Sunday, which prompted coach Antonio Conte to warn, “I hope he was irritated at the result. Because if he was irritated about something else, he’s dealing with the wrong person.”<\/p>\n

But Conte said on Tuesday that he and De Bruyne had cleared things up and the former Manchester City standout certainly looked like he had his head clear against Sporting.<\/p>\n

“There was never any problem. I’m a winner. I want to play football. I want to make the difference,” De Bruyne said. “Everything has been said. There’s no issue.”<\/p>\n

Two minutes after Napoli’s second goal and with nine minutes remaining, the 34-year-old De Bruyne was replaced by Billy Gilmour<\/a> without any issues — to a standing ovation in his first European match at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona.<\/p>\n

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rasmus H\u00f8jlund said he was grateful to be on the same team as Kevin De Bruyne after the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-193973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}