The mood at their home stadium was far from happy on Saturday afternoon. The home side was losing against Torino, an opponent that had allowed ten goals while netting just two in their last five league matches. Ultras from the Curva Nord were finishing their ongoing dissent in an ongoing feud with president Claudio Lotito.
A Season Falling Apart?
Had their campaign falling apart, or did there exist a binding element holding it together from the beginning? The club brought back Maurizio Sarri as head coach this summer, but then he admitted that the board had omitted to inform him about a registration embargo they were set to be hit with for fiscal problems. Reports that he could resign were unfounded, but he acknowledged that Lotito had "swindled" him.
Lazio were just as chaotic on the pitch as they were off it, overcoming Verona 4-0 and Genoa 3-0 but falling short in their other first five games, which included the capital clash. At any given moment, it's been difficult to determine if they are improving or imploding.
Cancellieri's Unforeseen Presence
A single player continued to smile amid the chaos. Matteo Cancellieri was not even supposed to be at Lazio during this campaign. He spent the last one at Parma as a loanee and, at the start of the off-season, his owning club were pushing for him to stay there a while longer. The signing restriction led to a change of plans. Lazio could not afford to reduce their roster lacking backup options.
He joined initially during Sarri's previous tenure, at that time a 20-year-old alumnus of Verona's academy. He accumulated 20 matches in the league with the club in 2022-23, the vast majority of those coming off the bench. The club's longtime sporting director, Igli Tare, who left after that campaign, would later accuse Sarri of "telling everyone Cancellieri was destined for stardom then never playing him."
Discovering His True Position
Perhaps the manager was still trying to identify the exact type of his skill set. Billed as an attacking winger when he joined, Cancellieri yet was deployed for most of that campaign as an unconvincing alternative to Ciro Immobile at No 9. Across 63 games during spells with Empoli and Parma during recent campaigns, he scored seven times. Shoehorn
