Lazio – Udinese

By: salvatore | March 14th, 2008

With all the hoopla going round about Uefa being fixed (big surprise there), and Rioma heading back to Manchester (enjoy, it’s a lovely place) there is still the little matter of this weekend’s Serie A games.

The Biancoceleste are off to Friuli, where they will be hoping to continue their somewhat positive streak of games (7 points out of a possible 9) since the absolute embarrassment against Cagliari. Seeing as how they barely broke a sweat beating the communist party of Livorno, confidence should be high…except that Fabio Vignaroli might potentially start up front.

Yep, it seems that Goran Pandev is on a yellow, and Rossi wants to have him available for the Derby. What this means then is that Mauri and Meghni are apparently worse than Vignaroli.

Sigh

Let that sink in a minute.

Fabio Vignaroli.

Fabio

All bets are off now (just don’t tell that to the Uefa boys, they like that sort of thing).

Udinese, meanwhile, will probably be doing what they can to snap out of the funk they’ve been in since January. If you’re keeping track, they’ve lost four of their last seven matches (including that five goal mess against Genoa), and tied two others. If Lazio has any designs on a Uefa Cup spot, this is the time to win.

That said, I think Udinese plays some of the best football in Italy, and Di Natale and Quagliarella can take a big fat Neapolitan shit on us if we give them enough space. Who’s got the unenviable job of shutting down the strikers from Bella Napoli? Could you believe one, David Rozehnal?

David

Nah, me neither.

There has been no word yet on the official starting line-up, but there is a chance Rozehnal will finally get a shot on the back line. Since I’ve said this for the last three games though, I won’t hold my breath until I actually see the bastard on the field. Hell, at this point I barely even believe he exists.

In any case, Delio has to rotate somewhat with a short week ahead, especially with little help coming on the injury front. Zauri, Firmani and Del Nero are not quite ready to return yet, and Mofo Mutarelli will probably only be back Wednesday against Rioma.

In the meantime, the situation with Mauri keeps getting better, with his father today telling reporters that big boy Stefano would be better off playing with Spalletti over at Rioma. Mauri jr. quickly came out to squash that whole thing, but Christ I wish this would happen. Please Merda, take him away from us.

Similarly unrealistic were the reports linking Lazio with Palermo captain Andrea Barzagli. He’d look good in Biancoceleste (an improvement over Pink IMO, sorry Steven), but why bother adding an expensive central defender, when we have Tuia waiting to get involved? Anyway, I digress.

The match tomorrow actually had a chance of being played behind closed doors, which would have taken away home field advantage for the Friuliani, but would have sucked in pretty much every other way. The reason for this was an apparent lack of stewards . The minimum needed is 150 and Udinese had, um, a lot less.

Reportedly they considered bringing some in from out of town, but finally they were able to magically rope in the necessary numbers locally. Are these people even trained? Or have they just been given a vest and told to get on with it?

Boh.

Probable formations:

Lazio: Nonno Ballotta; Behrami, Siviglia, Cribari, Radu; Mudingayi, Ledesma, Manfredini; Vignaroli (sigh), Bianchi, Rocchi.

Udinese: Handanovic; Coda, Felipe, Siqueira; Ferronetti, D’Agostino, Inler, Isla; Pepe, Quagliarella, Di Natale

Likelihood Lazio blows it: 50%
Likelihood Vignaroli scores: 15%

For a recap of what happened the last time these teams met, click here.