Lazio shift pressure on to Napoli as Luis Alberto’s backheel rocks Garcia
Maurizio Sarri came armed, as he always does, with the perfect Tuscan saying for the occasion. “Like I hear people say in Florence, c’è il pane e la sassata,” he told Dazn as Lazio prepared to kick off against Napoli. There’s bread, and then there’s being hit by a rock. A colourful way of expressing the feeling that life is only ever perfect or a complete disaster, with no middle ground in between.
His team had taken a few boulders to the face lately. Lazio’s best player, Sergej Milinkovic-Savic, left to join AlHilal in the summer. Then they lost their opening two games of the new season to Lecce and newly promoted Genoa. It was not the start Lazio had hoped for after finishing as runnersup last season. When players went to acknowledge supporters in the Stadio Olimpico’s Curva Nord at the end of the latter defeat, they were met with demands to “show some balls”.
A sense of urgency was heightened by the knowledge that Napoli were up next. Italy’s reigning champions had changed manager, replacing Luciano Spalletti with Rudi Garcia, but did not miss a beat as they began their campaign with two-goal margin wins over Frosinone and Sassuolo. This despite mostly playing without Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Serie A’s MVP for 2022-23, who only returned from a knee injury as a second-half substitute against the
Neroverdi.
Garcia has sought continuity, sticking with the same 4-3-3 used by Spalletti. His starting XI to face Lazio on Saturday featured only two changes to the side that lined up for the last edition of this fixture, in March, and both of them were forced. Kim Min-jae and Hirving Lozano left in the summer transfer window and were replaced here by Juan Jesus and Matteo Politano.
The first of those swaps is unquestionably a downgrade. Kim was awarded as Serie A’s best defender last season, while Jesus has not been a regular starter at a Serie A club in almost a decade. Another Brazilian, Natan, was signed from RB Bragantino in August as a longer-term replacement, but Garcia has said the 22-year-old needs time to adjust.
It would be too simple to blame Jesus for what happened on Saturday. Napoli started brightly against Lazio, playing with tempo and aggression that seemed to have their opponents on the back foot. But the visitors scored from their first real attack with a bewitching backheel by Luis Alberto, who redirected Felipe Anderson’s pass through his own legs and into the net before even turning to look at it.
Jesus was caught in no man’s land on the cross but could hardly be blamed for Luis Alberto finding so much space when the two teammates behind him neither closed the gap nor let him know the Spaniard was arriving. The real culprits might have been the slow legs that allowed Lazio to find space to begin with as Adam Marusic, Daichi Kamada and Danilo Cataldi combined to break the hosts’ press and release Felipe Anderson down the right.
Napoli equalised almost immediately, Piotr Zielinski’s deflected shot bobbling past Ivan Provedel, but Lazio reclaimed their lead after half-time. After winning possession from Zielinski, Felipe Anderson raced forward and played a square pass for Luis Alberto, who sold a dummy on the edge of the D and let the ball run to Kamada. The Japan international drilled home a left-footed finish.
It was a first Lazio goal for Kamada, signed from Eintracht Frankfurt to help fill the void left by Milinkovic-Savic. Luis Alberto, though, was the man pulling the strings – not only playing a key role in both goals but finishing with the greatest share of possession on his team and even winning the most tackles.
A Lazio team who came to Naples reeling from consecutive defeats were suddenly moving with a swagger. Mattéo Guendouzi, newly arrived from Marseille, came off the bench and within seconds played Mattia Zaccagni through to score a goal that was ruled out for offside. The former Arsenal player stuck the ball in the net himself moments later, but a VAR review would cancel this one out, too.
Not that it mattered. The game finished 2-1 to Lazio. One game was all it took for their roles to be reversed: Sarri’s team enjoying a slice of victory while Napoli took their turn to get pelted. Sceptics who had been underwhelmed by the choice of Garcia to replace Spalletti in the first place found all the evidence they needed to prove that he was the wrong choice after all. Never mind that Napoli also lost this same fixture under Spalletti six months ago.
If anything, Garcia’s greatest mistake might have been not to try something different. Lazio’s gameplan was much the same as last time: sitting deep in compact lines and making it a priority to deny access to their penalty area. In both matches Napoli had most of the ball and plenty of shots – but mostly from 20 yards out.
Sarri’s success was making sure his players knew how to break effectively when opportunities presented. The decisions to disallow Zaccagni’s and Guendouzi’s goals were correct, but a 4-1 scoreline would not have been an unfair reflection of the quality of chances Lazio created.
The real truth is that both managers will have challenges to work through when Serie A resumes after the international break, and, as Garcia put it, “the marathon begins”. The commencement of Champions League fixtures will require more varied use of squad resources and perhaps new tactical solutions.
Only Garcia knows how he plans to evolve this Napoli team – though there are clues, such as Stanislav Lobotka seeing less of the ball than he did under Spalletti. The club’s board are also under pressure to get Victor Osimhen’s much-discussed contract extension done and prevent that from becoming a distraction.
Lazio need a new identity of their own without Milinkovic-Savic, a player who contributed 28 goals and as many assists over the last three seasons. Sarri challenged Luis Alberto after Saturday’s game to “take the team in hand and become the extraordinary player he has always been and fought to become”.
The pair have butted heads since the manager took charge in 2021, with what have felt like recurring annual stories about missed training sessions and misunderstandings. In February, Luis Alberto gave an interview to the Spanish journalist Beni Arroyo in which he discussed the long video review sessions run by Sarri’s staff, saying: “Every now and then your eyelids start to drop.”
The manager responded by calling Luis Alberto “a big dick”. Yet the player has also spoken before – even in that same interview – of his gratitude to Lazio, and a desire to repay a club that helped him get back to his best after struggles with poor form and depression led him to consider quitting football in 2017.
Perhaps Saturday’s game represented a new dawn. Or maybe this was just an early-season game between teams who are not up to full speed yet. Sarri was not done yet dropping phrases to capture the moment. “When I was little,” he said, “all the old managers used to tell me that football played in August was a liar.”