A Bad Day At The Office

By: cathal | September 17th, 2009

Inexplicable, inexcusable and downright intolerable. There is not much you can say about a performance like that. You are on a big stage, a great opportunity lies in front of you to show the rest of Europe what you are all about and you blow it in spectacular fashion. Losing is always difficult to take but losing what was probably your easiest game in the competition is inpossible to swallow. To make matters worse, the mistakes came from the players included in Ballardini’s rotation policy and from that shaky defense that the president refused to invest in. To criticise them both would be easy, in fact, it is probably deserved but the whole performance was downright lackadaisical and at this level, if you give any team a chance, they will punish you. It is that simple.

I can understand the first mistake. The ball gets propelled into the air, Diakite’ finds himself in a 50/50 with the attacker and Bizzarri sees an easy catch. The problem is, when your goalkeeper and your defender don’t play together regularly, there is always a chance of miscommunication occurring and that’s exactly what happened. Both of them could have dealt with it individually but collectively, they didn’t and it’s just our luck that it lands at the feet of the opposition. On another day, you get away with that but on another day, those things don’t happen. As for the second goal, if any of you know what Cribari was thinking, please send your answer on the back of a postcard. I can’t for the life of me work out what he was attempting to do. There is a big lesson to be learned here; I just hope the players get a rollicking from the coach and take it on board.

On to Catania we go and I want a reaction. Nothing less than a win will suffice. Don’t get me wrong, I know it is a tough away trip and I know not many teams go there expecting to go back home with three points but after the shambles that was tonight, I demand it. There is a lot of soul-searching to be done and I want vengeance on the pitch and not in the dressing room. We are better than this and deserve much better than this. Forza Lazio!

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Reaction:

“They won because of the two mistakes that we made and we have to think about that. My players are responsible for the defeat and I am sorry that is the case.”

“It is now an uphill battle as we will constantly be playing catch up.” – Davide Ballardini

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“We had the game in our hands but after a catastrophe like that, it’s hard to explain.”

“The mistake was unfortunate, Cribari played a great game, I feel sorry for him.”

“It is important to win the first match but we got our demonstration and now we must take our chances in the future games.” – Roberto Baronio

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Lowlights: