Team Focus: Lazio's Dire Form Causing a Stink Among the Fans

Cries of foul weren’t limited to the training pitch at Formello last week. In protest at Lazio stinking up this season in Serie A, the ultras had left pungent bags of manure outside the gates. “Before making us drown in s**t, we’re going to make you eat it,” a banner read.

The team is down in the dumps at the moment. Lazio find themselves 12th in Serie A. It’s a disappointing but by no means disastrous position. Six points separate them from the drop zone. However, Lazio are in freefall and concern is mounting like the piles of compost heaped outside by the ultras.

Their last league win was on October 25 and since then they have picked up only two points. Lazio’s record in the last couple of months matches Verona’s as the worst in the league. All the teams around them in the form table with the exception of Frosinone have changed their manager and crisis talks were apparently being held on Tuesday night to discuss Stefano Pioli’s future.

A year ago, his team were seven points better off than they are now. Lazio were preparing to go to San Siro where they would take a 2-0 lead against Inter. Felipe Anderson was blossoming into one of the players of the season and they celebrated Christmas in third, where they would also finish the campaign. Pioli remains a contender for the Panchina d’Oro on the back of that achievement. How’s that saying go? One day you’re the cock of the walk, next you’re the feather duster.

So what has gone wrong? Well, there are shades of Napoli last season about this Lazio team. Counter intuitively a successful campaign instead proved pretty demoralising. Lazio lost the Coppa Italia final in traumatic circumstances. Moments after hitting the post in extra-time, Juventus striker Alessandro Matri, now a Lazio player, scored the only goal of the game.

They lost the Rome derby in the final five minutes and with it automatic qualification for the Champions League to their fiercest rivals. Lazio still made the preliminaries after a thrilling win in Naples on the final day and edged Bayer Leverkusen in the first leg of the play-offs. However, a 3-0 defeat at the BayArena ended Lazio’s hopes of returning to Europe’s elite club competition for the first time since 2008 before they really began.

Include defeat in the Italian Super Cup in Shanghai and what’s apparent is this group of players had a lot of close but yet so far moments in a short space of time. What did it do to their belief? How did it impact on their motivation?

More parallels with Napoli a year ago can be drawn in their approach to recruitment too. Rather than speculate to accumulate and equip the team to win their Champions League play-off, they decided to be prudent instead and hold off until the group stage money was guaranteed. It’s a risk because either way, you’re leaving it late and if you then don’t qualify, as Lazio didn’t, the owner has to put his hand in his own pocket, which the likes of Aurelio De Laurentiis and Claudio Lotito are reluctant to do.

When Lazio did get around to buying players, their strategy was top heavy. They added mercurial wingers even though what this team dearly needed was experienced cover for their best defender Stefan de Vrij. Lazio didn’t oblige. The only centre-back they bought was the raw and uncut Wesley Hoedt from AZ. Predictably when de Vrij got injured at the end of August and required surgery that will keep him out until the New Year, fears for the defence were realised.

It currently ranks 5th bottom in Serie A even though Lazio concede the fifth fewest shots on target. To say the backline has mistakes in it is an understatement. Take Mauricio for example. He became the first player ever to get sent off in Serie A, the Champions League and Europa League in the same season.

The other signings were all well intentioned but volatile. Ricardo Kishna, a Mino Raiola client who fell out with Frank de Boer at Ajax, scored on his Serie A debut against Bologna but hasn’t been seen since. Injury prone to the extent that when he underwent a medical there were reports he failed one, he had surgery for a knee problem last night. As for Ravel Morrison, well after impressing in pre-season he cuts a frustrated figure and has acted out either on Twitter or in training and looks likely to be gone when the window opens in January. Only Sergej Milinkovic-Savic, the Under-20 World Cup winner and Lazio’s most expensive summer signing from Genk [€9m], has regularly played for the first team.

Lack of depth has been an issue. Unlike last season, Lazio are back playing on three fronts. It wouldn’t be as big a problem if the stars of the last campaign were still performing. Antonio Candreva in particular has been a shadow of himself. Overlooked for the captain’s armband in the summer, the decision to give it to Lucas Biglia instead, Lazio’s best player this season, did not go down particularly well with him. It hasn’t always looked like a happy camp.

The atmosphere around the club is tense. Last season’s results did much to paper over cracks and foster a phoney ceasefire in the relationship between the ultras and the owners. Hostilities have now resumed. This summer served as another confirmation to the controversially partitioned Curva Nord, not that they needed one, that Lotito will not spend to take this team to the next level. He is, in their opinion, “a dream thief.” They’re also disillusioned with the players for being indifferent to their plight. The ultras supported them unconditionally last season on and off the pitch and don’t believe the favour has been returned.

Comments made by goalkeeper Federico Marchetti - it’s not easy to play in a semi-deserted ground. Turning out in front of 3,000 fans in the Europa League is not easy - were not appreciated. Especially when another goalkeeper, Gigi Buffon, went under the Curva Nord on Juventus’ visit to the Olimpico to applaud them and show solidarity. Pioli has so far escaped their wrath. As they see it, he is the “latest sacrificial victim to act as cover for the wickedness of others.”

Not entirely blameless, his team selections have occasionally baffled. For instance, the decision to leave Anderson, his top scorer, out of the starting line up against Samp on Monday night. The game summed up Lazio’s season. They’ve made hard work of scoring this term but still got in front after Matri became the seventh Lazio player to score after coming off the bench. Absurdly Marchetti injured himself celebrating. Then, in the 93rd minute, his replacement, Etrit Berisha came rushing out of his box and fouled Luis Muriel after a mix up between Abdoulay Konko and Santi Gentiletti threatened to let the Samp forward in. Inevitably Ervin Zukanovic scored from the subsequent free-kick, which deflected in off Anderson and Lazio’s victory went up in smoke.

Just when you thought their season couldn’t get any more calamitous after Senad Lulic lost a finger in a freak gym accident, it did. The players were in tears. Lose in the Cup tonight and Pioli, perhaps a victim of raised expectations, will likely lose his job. But the club’s problems go beyond him. Something is rotten at Lazio and it smells even worse than the “Christmas” sacks the ultras left last week.

Where will Lazio finish in Serie A this season? Let us know in the comments below