“With pain in my heart, having failed to achieve the target we set ourselves, I am bringing an end to my experience”.
Those were the words of Gennaro Gattuso on the day he resigned as coach of the Italian national team.
Under his charge, the Azzurri had failed to qualify for the World Cup for the third time in a row.
By all accounts, the reign was a disaster.
And, if we are honest with ourselves, we thought it’d be the same at Lazio, especially when his side crashed out to Mantova in the Coppa Italia.
The odds, it seemed, were stacked against him. From Greece to Spain, France to Croatia, Gattuso’s time in the dugout has been sketchy at best. He usually comes in, expels a lot of hot air, and leaves.
What’s more, he joined a club that was seemingly in the doldrums. Maurizio Sarri huffed and puffed his way out of Rome last season; what more could he have done with a squad so limited, a transfer budget so non-existent?
Quite a bit, as Gattuso is now proving. Had Piotr Zielinski not lashed in a last minute winner against Fiorentina on Sunday, the Biancocelesti would be sitting top of the table.
Even with that, they still sit level on points with the league leaders. They have the best defence in the league, and that’s after they’ve sold Mario Gila.
But the real question, the one they’re slowly starting to ask at the Olimpico, is how far can they go?
Very, if the likes of Nuno Tavares, Kenneth Taylor and Josip Šutalo can keep it up. All three have been tremendous, linchpins of a revival that has every chance of snaring their side a Champions League place.
Tavares in particular has no ceiling. Even when the Portuguese was struggling at Arsenal, there were no questions about his technique or ability. Back then his temperament was the undoing. He has blown extremely hot before only to extinguish before Christmas but, if he has now taken that step to become international quality, he may take his teammates with him.
Šutalo, too, is another who has long threatened to break through. Moving to Lazio from Ajax felt at the time like a lateral move; not the step that he or his agents might have expected when they touched down in Amsterdam.
But in Rome he has found the perfect springboard, not to mention the ideal partner in Oliver Provstgaard. That best defence statistic? You can thank these two boys for that.
But this isn’t just a mean defence or a couple of star performers. This is a whole time in synchrony, an outfit that is aggressive in its confidence. So far, Lazio have taken the fight to every opponent they’ve faced, a deliberate decision a coach who felt this team were too passive, too technical last year.
So far, in the league at least, gung ho has proven the way to go.
Things, of course – are not perfect. How the season looks come January, where Lazio may be hit with another transfer fan, will be illustrative.
Meanwhile, the fans’ relationship with Claudio Lotito has long been unfixable, the ongoing protests denying the Laziali sight of their best side in years.
Gattuso himself has said that Lazio have ‘no business’ being where they are in the table, and that survival remains the priority.
“I have a flaw” he confessed ahead of the Parma game.
“I don’t celebrate much when things go well. I was the same as a player. I always think about what comes next”.
For much of the past two season, Lazio fans have been dreading that very thing.
But under this fiery and ambitious regime, they can dare themselves to dream about new experiences. European ones or – maybe, just maybe – some trophy-winning ones.
