Napoli coach Maurizio Sarri has hit back at club president Aurelio De Laurentiis's stinging criticism of the team after a 3-1 Champions League defeat to Real Madrid.

"I would have preferred that certain things be said to me," Sarri said after De Laurentiis claimed Naples-born Lorenzo Insigne was the only player not cowed by Zinedine Zidane's team of 'Galacticos'.

"The only player who showed any Neapolitan grit was Lorenzo Insigne, who is from Naples," said Napoli's film-producer owner De Laurentiis.

"The rest simply didn't exist. It was like they disappeared."

Napoli host Real at the San Paolo on March 7 looking to overturn a 3-1 first-leg deficit following defeat at the Santiago Bernabeu on Wednesday.

Napoli, last season's Serie A runners-up, attracted 10,000 fans to the Spanish capital and Insigne got the visitors off to the perfect start with a 40-yard drive that put the Italians 1-0 up in the opening minutes.

But Karim Benzema levelled with a powerful header soon after before goals from Toni Kroos and Casemiro had Zidane's men 3-1 in front by the 54th minute.

De Laurentiis levelled further criticism at Sarri when he claimed the coach had blundered by replacing Slovak midfielder Marek Hamsik with Polish striker Arkadiusz Milik in the closing minutes.

Milik usually plays as a lone striker but, amid his recovery from a cruciate knee ligament injury, Belgian Dries Mertens has excelled in that role.

"Obviously, we can't expect too much from someone who's not playing in his own position. If we hadn't had the Milik incident, then maybe it would have turned out to be a different game," said De Laurentiis, although Milik only entered the fray with eight minutes left, with the score already 3-1.

Sarri, who has recently been linked to the coach's job at Juventus, amid reports current Juve handler Massimiliano Allegri could move to England's Premier League, immediately hit back at the club owner, insisting he calls the shots at Napoli's Castelvolturno training base, not De Laurentiis.

"At Castelvolturno I'm the one who decides," said Sarri when asked about De Laurentiis's comments. "I experimented with everything there was to experiment with.

"I would have preferred that certain things be said to me. I don't agree with anything (De Laurentiis said). For me, the team gave a good account of themselves."