The mood at their home stadium was decidedly gloomy on Saturday afternoon. The home side was losing against Torino, a side that had allowed 10 goals while scoring only two in their most recent five league matches. Supporters from the Curva Nord were finishing their latest protest in a long-running conflict with chairman Claudio Lotito.
A Season Falling Apart?
Was the team's progress unraveling, or was there ever any cohesion holding it together in the first place? The club brought back Maurizio Sarri to lead the team in the summer transfer window, before he publicly stated that the board had not mentioned the transfer ban they were set to be hit with for fiscal problems. Reports that he might quit were not true, but he stated that Lotito had "misled" him.
Lazio were just as chaotic on the pitch as they were off it, overcoming Verona 4-0 and Genoa 3-0 but losing the rest of their opening fixtures, including the Rome derby. At any given moment, it has been hard to ascertain if progress is being made or collapsing.
The Youngster's Surprising Return
At least one man kept smiling amid the chaos. Matteo Cancellieri was not even supposed to feature for Lazio this season. He completed last season at Parma as a loanee and, at the start of the off-season, his owning club were attempting to stay there a while longer. The signing restriction forced a rethink. They were unable to reduce their roster with no new signings.
Cancellieri arrived in the first place during Sarri's previous tenure, at that time a 20-year-old graduate of Verona's academy. He accumulated 20 league appearances with the club in 2022-23, all but one of those from the bench. Their former sporting director, Igli Tare, who left following that term, would later accuse Sarri of "informing all Cancellieri would be a star only to bench him consistently."
Discovering His True Position
It's possible the coach was persistently working to determine the specific characteristics of the player's talent. Originally described as an attacking winger when he joined, Cancellieri yet was deployed for the majority of that term as an ineffective backup to Ciro Immobile as center forward. In 63 appearances during spells with Empoli and Parma in the past two years, he netted seven goals. Shoehorn
