The mood at their home stadium was far from happy on Saturday afternoon. Lazio were trailing against Torino, an opponent that had conceded ten goals while scoring only two in their last five league matches. Ultras from the Curva Nord were finishing their most recent demonstration in a long-running conflict with club owner Claudio Lotito.
The Campaign Coming Unstitched?
Was Lazio's season falling apart, or was there ever any cohesion keeping it intact from the beginning? They reappointed Maurizio Sarri to lead the team this summer, before he admitted that the board had failed to disclose a registration embargo they were set to be hit with for accounting issues. Speculation that he might quit were not true, but he acknowledged that Lotito had "misled" him.
The Roman club were just as chaotic on the pitch as off the field, 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 tell if progress is being made or imploding.
Cancellieri's Unforeseen Comeback
A single player kept smiling amid the chaos. Matteo Cancellieri was not even supposed to feature for Lazio this season. He was on last season at Parma as a loanee and, at the start of the off-season, Lazio were advocating for him to extend his stay a while longer. The registration embargo led to a change of plans. They were unable to reduce their roster lacking backup options.
He signed initially when Sarri was last in charge, at that time a 20-year-old product of Verona's academy. He made 20 league appearances with the club in 2022-23, almost all of those as a substitute. Their former sporting director, Igli Tare, who departed after that campaign, would later accuse Sarri of "telling everyone Cancellieri was destined for stardom then never playing him."
Discovering His Best Role
Maybe Sarri was persistently working to work out the nature of Cancellieri's abilities. Billed as a wide forward upon signing, Cancellieri yet was deployed for most of that campaign as an ineffective backup to Ciro Immobile in the striker role. In 63 appearances while playing for Empoli and Parma in the past two years, his tally was seven goals. Shoehorn
