Napoli might have found a new hero in Lukaku in 4-0 win at Cagliari

Napoli might have a new hero in Romelu Lukaku.

The former Chelsea striker set up two goals as well as scoring as Napoli won 4-0 at Cagliari on Sunday for their third straight victory in the Italian league.

There are positive signs that, under new coach Antonio Conte, Napoli started to look more like the team that stormed to the league title in 2023 and less like the troubled side of last season.

One of the stars of that team was the now departed Victor Osimhen and he was replaced by Lukaku – reuniting the Belgian forward with Conte after the pair won Serie A at Inter in 2021.

"I strongly wanted Romelu, as I always have throughout my career, because we're talking about an atypical player," Conte said. "He's not yet at his top level but he's a player who will become fundamental for us."

Conte lost his first league game in charge but Napoli have won all three since then, scoring nine goals and conceding just one.

Lukaku scored on his debut last time out and was given his first start for Napoli on Sunday. He proved dangerous from the start and set up the opener in the 18th minute, rolling Matteo Politano's cutback across the area to Giovanni Di Lorenzo, whose effort was deflected by Cagliari defender Yerry Mina.

The game had to be suspended for around eight minutes in the first half because of crowd trouble but that didn't disrupt the free-flowing action in an entertaining game in Sardinia.

Napoli had Alex Meret to thank for keeping them in the lead as the goalkeeper pulled off a number of great saves to deny Roberto Piccoli and Sebastiano Luperto and also finger-tipped a remarkable long-range strike from Razvan Marin off the crossbar.

Napoli doubled their lead in the 66th minute when Khvicha Kvaratskhelia ran onto a pinpoint through-ball from Lukaku and fired into the bottom left corner.

Kvaratskhelia returned the favor four minutes later following a howler from Cagliari goalkeeper Simone Scuffet who, while trying to play out from the back, passed the ball straight to the Georgian. Kvaratskhelia passed to Lukaku for a simple finish into the far bottom corner.

Alessandro Buongiorno netted in stoppage time for his first goal since joining Napoli from Torino in the off-season.