Feyenoord-Lazio, Sarri: “Lack of personality, Champions with water up their throats”

“In this event we are in deep trouble, either we give 101 percent or we struggle to keep up.” It is at the end of the comment on the defeat against Feyenoord that Maurizio Sarri raises the alarm about Lazio’s Champions League: “Now we have two games at home, we must try to exploit them as much as possible and let’s see with which ranking we arrive at the last one. The road is still long , we hope to be able to fix it, but if this is the attitude we won’t be able to do it. It’s clear that in a group of six games when you lose one the situation starts to become problematic.”

The problem

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“We had a fearful first half. Fearful even to play, afraid of their aggression”, is Sarri’s analysis on Sky’s microphone. “When we conceded the first goal it was in the air and it could have been there, when we conceded the second it was a moment of the match in which it wasn’t there: we could have ended the first half at 1-0. In the end the counting of the balls goal is 6-5 for them, not that far. But I didn’t like the first half due to this submissiveness towards an aggressive team which we however expected. The fear of playing the ball: against such aggressive teams if you put three passes in queue and then you can find huge spaces. I was hoping for an attitude with much more personality.”

Mosci

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“Physical difference? I saw a notable difference in emotional and nervous energy”, said Sarri again, who, responding to the different performance of the defensive phase this year compared to last season, commented: “We need to work on all 100 meters of the pitch, the pressure applied in the first half with that intensity makes no sense, the spaces left in the central areas don’t either: our level of aggression tonight wasn’t the right one.