The mood at their home stadium was far from happy this past Saturday. The home side was losing against Torino, a side that had conceded ten goals while managing only two goals in their most recent five league matches. Supporters from the Curva Nord were concluding their latest protest in an ongoing feud with club owner Claudio Lotito.
A Season Falling Apart?
Had their campaign coming unstitched, or did there exist a thread maintaining its structure to start with? Lazio reinstated Maurizio Sarri as head coach during the off-season, but then he to later acknowledge that the board had not mentioned a registration embargo they were facing for fiscal problems. Speculation that he could resign were not true, but he did say that Lotito had "deceived" him.
The Roman club appeared equally disorganized on the pitch as behind the scenes, beating Verona 4-0 and Genoa 3-0 but falling short in the rest of their first five games, featuring the derby della Capitale. From one game to the next, it has been hard to ascertain if they are improving or collapsing.
Matteo's Surprising Presence
A single player remained positive through it. Matteo Cancellieri was not even supposed to feature for Lazio this year. He spent the last one at Parma as a loanee and, at the start of the off-season, Lazio were advocating for him to extend his stay for another season. The transfer ban forced a rethink. They were unable to thin their squad lacking backup options.
He signed originally when Sarri was last in charge, back then just 20 years old product of Verona's academy. He accumulated 20 matches in the league for Lazio in the 2022-23 season, almost all of those coming off the bench. Their former sporting director, Igli Tare, who left after that campaign, would later accuse Sarri of "informing all Cancellieri would be a star but then not selecting him."
Finding His Natural Fit
Perhaps the manager was persistently working to determine the nature of his skill set. Billed as an attacking winger on arrival, Cancellieri yet was deployed for the majority of that term as an unconvincing alternative to Ciro Immobile as center forward. Across 63 games on loan at Empoli and Parma in the past two years, he scored seven times. Shoehorn
