The mood at Lazio's home ground was anything but joyful this past Saturday. The Biancocelesti found themselves behind against Torino, a side that had conceded ten goals while scoring only two in their last five league matches. Fans from the Curva Nord were wrapping up their latest protest in an ongoing feud with chairman Claudio Lotito.
A Season Coming Unstitched?
Was Lazio's season unraveling, or had there never been a thread maintaining its structure to start with? The club brought back Maurizio Sarri to lead the team in the summer transfer window, before he admitted that the management had failed to disclose the transfer ban they were set to be hit with for fiscal problems. Reports that he might quit were unfounded, but he stated that Lotito had "misled" him.
Lazio appeared equally disorganized in their performances as they were off it, defeating Verona 4-0 and Genoa 3-0 but losing the rest of their first five games, featuring the derby della Capitale. At any given moment, it has been hard to determine if they're getting better or self-destructing.
Matteo's Surprising Comeback
A single player kept smiling through it. Matteo Cancellieri wasn't originally meant to remain with Lazio during this campaign. He completed the last one on loan at Parma and, early this summer, his owning club were advocating for him to extend his stay for another season. The transfer ban led to a change of plans. They were unable to weaken their team without replacements.
He joined initially when Sarri was last in charge, then a 20-year-old product of Verona's academy. He accumulated 20 league appearances for Lazio in that campaign, all but one of those as a substitute. Their former sporting director, Igli Tare, who departed after that campaign, would later accuse Sarri of "promising everyone Cancellieri had superstar potential then never playing him."
Uncovering His True Position
Maybe Sarri was continuing to attempt to identify the exact type of Cancellieri's abilities. Billed as a wide forward when he joined, Cancellieri instead found himself the majority of that term as an ineffective backup to Ciro Immobile in the striker role. Across 63 games on loan at Empoli and Parma over the last two seasons, he netted seven goals. Shoehorn
