The mood at their home stadium was anything but joyful on Saturday afternoon. Lazio were trailing against Torino, a side that had allowed ten goals while scoring only two in their previous five league matches. Supporters from the Curva Nord were concluding their most recent demonstration in a continuous dispute with chairman Claudio Lotito.
The Campaign Unraveling?
Was Lazio's season falling apart, or did there exist a binding element holding it together from the beginning? They reappointed Maurizio Sarri as manager during the off-season, but then he publicly stated that the management had not mentioned a registration embargo they were set to be hit with for accounting issues. Rumours that he could resign were without basis, but he did say that Lotito had "misled" him.
Lazio became as messy on the pitch as off the field, beating Verona 4-0 and Genoa 3-0 but being defeated in the rest of their first five games, including the Rome derby. Throughout this period, it's been difficult to tell if they're getting better or self-destructing.
Matteo's Surprising Comeback
A single player remained positive throughout. Matteo Cancellieri had not been expected to remain with Lazio this year. He completed the previous campaign at Parma as a loanee and, at the start of the off-season, his parent club were pushing for him to remain there temporarily. The signing restriction forced a rethink. The club couldn't risk to reduce their roster without replacements.
He joined in the first place when Sarri was last in charge, then a 20-year-old product of Verona's academy. He made 20 matches in the league with the club in the 2022-23 season, all but one of those coming off the bench. Their former sporting director, Igli Tare, who left after that campaign, would later accuse Sarri of "promising everyone Cancellieri would be a star only to bench him consistently."
Discovering His Natural Fit
Perhaps the manager was still trying to identify the exact type of his skill set. Labeled as a flank player on arrival, Cancellieri yet was deployed for most of that campaign as an ineffective backup to Ciro Immobile in the striker role. Across 63 games on loan at Empoli and Parma in the past two years, his tally was seven goals. Shoehorn
