Ciro Immobile
Lazio striker in the form of his life at 30
When he was officially presented as a Lazio player in 2016, Ciro Immobile was asked how he thought he compared with previous strikers at the club.
Modestly, he said he had seen footage of players such as Beppe Signori and Bruno Giordano but, for the time being, he would not like to draw comparisons with them, adding: “Maybe if you ask me the same question in two or three years time I might give you an answer.”
Well, four years have now gone by and the comparisons are hard to avoid. With 27 goals by March for league leaders Lazio, the 30-year-old is not only the leading marksman in Serie A this season he also ranks at number four in Lazio’s all-time scoring chart behind Silvio Piola, Signori and Giorgio Chinaglia. Further afield he also leads the ESM Golden Shoe standings, ahead of Robert Lewandowski, Erling Haaland, Cristiano Ronaldo and Timo Werner (see page 75).
The point about Immobile’s reticence on that first afternoon is that it was a reflection on the two disappointing years that had gone before, first with Borussia Dortmund and then Sevilla.
In 2014, having just topped the Serie A scoring chart with 22 goals for Torino, he joined a Dortmund side coached by Jurgen Klopp. The German experience, however, did not work out. By the end of a season in which he saw too much time on the bench, he had scored 10 goals, with just three of those coming in the Bundesliga. He left with the conclusion that German was “damn hard to learn” and headed to Spain.
To some extent things were even worse at Sevilla, where he scored just four times, and by January 2016 he was back at Torino, where he rediscovered his touch and found the net 14 times before the end of the season.
That earned him a €9.5million move to Lazio in the summer. One hundred and sixteen goals in the following three-anda-half seasons and Lazio would now probably put a €70m price tag on him.
To put it mildly, the Lazio experience has put Immobile’s faltering career back
on track. And if he goes on to win the title of “Capocannoniere” this season, it will be the second time he has done it with Lazio, having ended up joint-top scorer with Internazionale’s Mauro Icardi on 29 goals in the 2017-18 campaign.
One man who has not been surprised by Immobile’s good form with Lazio is his former coach at Serie B side Pescara, Zdenek Zeman.
Playing alongside Lorenzo Insigne (now at Napoli) and Marco Verratti (now at Paris Saint-Germain), Immobile scored 28 goals and topped the second-tier chart in the 2011-12 season. Looking
“In the past he would blast it high into the terraces. He now shoots only when he thinks he will score” Former Lazio coach Zdenek Zeman
at the current Immobile, Zeman recently told “When he came to me it was after a couple of seasons when he hadn’t scored much.
“But he was a worker, a player who really wanted to train and push himself, and he did that and he started scoring goals immediately. He is a better striker now than he was with me. He sees the goal much better.
“Whereas in the past he would blast it high into the terraces, he now shoots only when he thinks he will score.”
Zeman’s observations are a reflection of the fact that Immobile is nothing if not a player whose best qualities are his physical power and presence rather than a refined technique. He is in fact very handy with his feet but he is also much admired for his work rate and his willingness to put himself about, in attack and defence.
Obviously, Zeman is too subtle to suggest that Immobile could yet inspire Lazio to a title win. But he does acknowledge that, along with midfielders, Luis Alberto and Sergej Milinkovic-Savic, he is fundamental to the side’s title challenge.
When he returned to Italy at the age of 26, Immobile had said that he hoped to do well because the best years for a striker were between “26 and 30 years of age”. If he has managed to resurrect his career in those years at Lazio then he is the first to admit that he owes much to Lazio coach Simone Inzaghi, a coach “who put me right in the heart of his plans”.
His good seasons with Lazio have meant the boy from Torre Annunziata, Naples, has consolidated his position in the Italian national squad.
Given his first cap in a 1-0 friendly loss to Spain in 2014, he has now won 39 caps, scoring 10 goals, under four different coaches: Cesare Prandelli, Antonio Conte, Gian Piero Ventura and Roberto Mancini. Barring injury he looks a certainty for the Euro 2020 squad and Mancini will doubtlessly hope that he continues in his rich goalscoring vein.
In truth, Immobile has not always sparkled for Italy. In the 1-0 loss to Uruguay in the 2014 World Cup and the World Cup play-off loss to Sweden in 2017 he was less than inspired. Then again, he was not the only one.
At Euro 2020 this summer Italians will be hoping he can sustain his current match-winning form. In the meantime, Lazio fans will settle for more of the same in Serie A.