Player Profile: Fernando Muslera

By: Franco | July 20th, 2009

I would like to welcome you to my very first Blog on the Lazio Offside. Some of you may of seen me around in the comments section of the blog previously but for those of you who have not, I look forward to interacting with you in the future.

As most of you are aware, Cathal has been the main Blogger here at the Lazio offside for sometime now (and what a great job he has been doing may I add) but from this blog onwards, we will be working together on the Lazio blog as a team. We both have interesting plans for the Blog and we hope that together we can take the Lazio Blog to new levels and we do encourage that if anyone has any comments on our work that I urge you to please speak up and let us know, as we very much would appreciate any feedback received. Our aim to to keep you all up to date and interested about our club, the best and first club in Rome: Società Sportiva Lazio.

Cathal will continue to cover the Mercato, pre-season fixtures ect and I for the time being will be concentrating on a new concept – Player Profiles. Over the next few months, I plan to profile each and every player in the Lazio squad, whether they be current or freshly put pen to paper so that by season start, you all would have a good run down of our squad and what our players are all capable of. I plan to kick this off today with none other than; Fernando Muslera.

Full name: Néstor Fernando Muslera Micol
Date of birth: June 16, 1986 (age 23)
Place of birth: Montevideo, Uruguay
Height: 1.90 m (6 ft 3 in)
Playing position: Goalkeeper
Squad Number: 86

Career to date:
2004 until 2007 – Montevideo Wanderers – 14 appearances
2006 until 2007 – Nacional (Loan) – 15 appearances
2007 until present – Lazio – 24 appearances

Muslera started his football career with Montevideo Wanderers in 2004, then joining Nacional on loan in 2006. Durring this time his appearances were limited but showed enough promise to gain himself a transfer to Lazio.

Muslera joined Lazio at the close of the August 2007 transfer window for €3 million as a replacement for the retired Angelo Peruzzi and after plans to sign Juan Pablo Carrizo were delayed due to the non-EU status of the Argentine.

Muslera made his full debut for Lazio in a 3-1 home win against Cagliari on 16 September 2007 earning himself four more consecutive starts. This run of starts however, ended in a disappointing performance in Lazio’s 5-1 home loss to Milan on 7 October that saw him benched in favor of veteran Marco Ballotta. This was pretty much the end of a disappointing season for Nando and most fans from this point wrote him off as a waste of space, myself included.

Despite his poor start, Muslera continued with Lazio and started his second season with the club as second-choice keeper for the 2008-09 season, behind new signing Juan Pablo Carrizo. Carrizo (a player that we Laziale thought would be our savior – more about that in another post!) ended up being more of a let down then any other keeper the wear the pride of Rome jersey. The rise and fall of Carrizo came as a good news, bad news scenario but fans were not to know of what was to become of the young Uruguian. Muslera regained the starting spot in January 2009 following the run of poor form by Carrizo, coupled with conflicts with team management. With each and every game Nando continued to impress and prove his critics wrong. Not only did he step it up a notch but was even voted on several serie A polls as the Goalkeeper of the round on more than his fair share of occasions. An amazing turn around from the player that arrived and disappointed at the Italian capital only 12 months earlier.

With Muslera in Goals a newly born Lazio team focused their energy on winning the Coppa Italia tournament to gain their place in Europe. Sure enough, Lazio achieved their goal and won the Coppa Italia final on May 13, 2009 and Muslera ended up being one of the hero’s of that night as he saved two penalties as Lazio emerged victorious 6-5 in the shootout after the match ended 1-1 in extra time.

With Carrizo sent out on loan, Lazio have repaid their faith in the youngster as he starts the new 2009/10 serie A season as Lazio’s 1st choice keeper behind newly signed Bizzari – who no doubt is set to give the Uruguian a run for his money. We fans are hoping for a repeat performance of last season (or maybe go one better) and start off with leading us to victory in the super coppa next month against Inter. Although Muslera has already been called up for the Uruguayan national team, he has yet to earn his first cap. We wish him all the best for the 2009/10 season and we hope he earns a spot for the Uruguay national team also.

Forza Lazio, Forza Muslera!