Villarreal’s 3-1 comeback against Napoli at La Cerámica has ended a long Champions League wait, giving the Spanish side their first victory in the competition for four and a half years and changing the tone of their European campaign after a difficult opening night.
A night that turned at La Cerámica
- Napoli struck first in the eighth minute through Amir Rrahmani, putting Villarreal behind early in their second Champions League match of the season.
- Íñigo Pérez’s side recovered through goals from Georges Mikautadze, Mourinho and Tani Oluwaseyi.
- The 3-1 result kept all three points in Castellón and brought Villarreal a first Champions League win since their 1-0 home success over Bayern Munich in the first leg of the 2022 quarter-finals.
Arnaut Danjuma, now a Valencia player, scored the only goal against Bayern in April 2022. Villarreal’s European run that year carried them into the semi-finals, but their next Champions League fixture brought a 1-1 draw in Munich before Liverpool won both semi-final legs, 2-0 and 3-2.
End of a damaging sequence
Between the Bayern victory and this win over Napoli, Villarreal had gone 12 Champions League matches without a victory, drawing three and losing nine. Seven of those defeats came consecutively.
After missing two seasons of Champions League football, Villarreal returned last term but endured another unforgiving league-phase campaign. They drew 2-2 at home to Juventus, while defeats followed against Tottenham, Manchester City, Pafos, Borussia Dortmund, Copenhagen, Ajax and Bayer Leverkusen.
- Tottenham: 1-0 defeat
- Manchester City: 0-2 defeat
- Pafos: 0-1 defeat
- Borussia Dortmund: 0-4 defeat
- Copenhagen: 2-3 defeat
- Ajax: 1-2 defeat
- Bayer Leverkusen: 0-3 defeat
- Borussia Dortmund, this season’s opening match: 2-3 defeat
The Napoli result therefore closes Villarreal’s worst sequence of consecutive Champions League losses and their longest winless run in the competition. It also ends the club’s poorest European spell across all UEFA tournaments: nine matches without a win.
Their previous European victory of any kind had come in 2024, when Villarreal beat Olympique de Marseille 3-1 in the second leg of their Europa League last-16 tie. Against Napoli, they finally found the response that had been absent for too long on Champions League nights.
