The atmosphere at Lazio's home ground was anything but joyful this past Saturday. The home side was losing against Torino, a side that had conceded a total of 10 goals while managing only two goals in their last five league matches. Fans from the Curva Nord were concluding their latest protest in a long-running conflict with chairman Claudio Lotito.
This Year's Efforts Coming Unstitched?
Had their campaign falling apart, or had there never been a thread keeping it intact from the beginning? The club brought back Maurizio Sarri to lead the team this summer, before he publicly stated that the club had omitted to inform him about the transfer ban they were set to be hit with for accounting issues. Rumours that his departure was imminent were not true, but he acknowledged that Lotito had "swindled" him.
The Roman club appeared equally disorganized during matches as off the field, beating Verona 4-0 and Genoa 3-0 but falling short in the rest of their opening fixtures, including the Rome derby. At any given moment, observers have struggled to ascertain if they are improving or self-destructing.
Matteo's Unexpected Comeback
A single player kept smiling throughout. Matteo Cancellieri had not been expected to be at Lazio this year. He spent the previous campaign at Parma as a loanee and, at the start of the off-season, his owning club were advocating for him to remain there temporarily. The registration embargo forced a rethink. The club couldn't risk to weaken their team with no new signings.
He signed originally during Sarri's previous tenure, then a 20-year-old alumnus of Verona's academy. He made 20 league appearances with the club in the 2022-23 season, almost all of those as a substitute. Their former sporting director, Igli Tare, who left following that term, subsequently claimed Sarri of "telling everyone Cancellieri would be a star then never playing him."
Finding His True Position
Maybe Sarri was continuing to attempt to work out the exact type of his skill set. Originally described as a flank player when he joined, Cancellieri nevertheless spent most of that campaign as an ineffective backup to Ciro Immobile as center forward. Across 63 games on loan at Empoli and Parma in the past two years, he netted seven goals. Shoehorn
