Lazio are insanely bad – So much worse than you can imagine

After losing 2–0 to Inter, Lazio are down to ninth in the Serie A table going into the third international break of the season. I doubt it’s something they’re ecstatic about, but the perception seems to be that it’s not exactly the end of the world. Last year they finished seventh, and since then they have been unable to make any reinforcements to the team for, well, reasons we will get to. In a highly competitive Serie A, Lazio are just four points off sixth, seven points off third, and nine points off first. Still, these results are definitely a disappointment, especially considering seventh in Serie A wasn’t good enough for Marco Baroni to keep his job last year. However I don’t think people realize just how bad Lazio are.

Maurizio Sarri has given up

Following the dismissal of Marco Baroni last summer, Lazio would reunite with Maurizio Sarri. At 66 years old, and having resigned as Lazio coach likely right before he would have been sacked over a year prior, it was not the most inspiring move. In fact, the signs that Lazio didn’t quite have ‘the old Sarri’ on their hands were certainly already there during his first stint — not least in the period preceding his resignation. There was a time when Sarri was notorious for being able to make any given corps of players play like Barcelona. That’s not quite what we saw at Lazio. Instead, they played a very vanilla style of football and typically conceded a good amount of possession to their opponents — not to great competitive success I might add. If this coaching tenure was worthy of criticism — and here it bears repeating that Sarri’s dismissal was practically inevitable before he decided to resign — I actually do not know how to adequately describe the start to Sarri’s return to Lazio.

First of all, one might argue that even Sarri’s previous Lazio was excessively conservative in its approach, both in and out of possession. In some ways this edition of Lazio is even more talented on paper, which is part of the reason why the critique above is even more applicable today. Firstly, in terms of passes allowed per defensive action in the opposing half (a metric for the intensity and aggression of how a team presses), Lazio have the third highest figure in Serie A (via Understat). In other words, only two teams in the league press less than Lazio. In fairness, one of those teams is Milan, still very much a contender to win the scudetto. However, the point here is not even to illustrate the flaws in Lazio’s performances, but rather to point out how divorced Maurizio Sarri has become from the style of football he used to represent. Lazio’s ranking of 11th in possession (via FBref), with a percentage of 48.8, conveys a similar point. Similar metrics do a little more to illustrate Lazio’s underlying issues. For instance, they rank just 14th in Serie A for touches in the attacking third, and 16th for touches in the attacking penalty area (also via FBref). If you want to score goals, you typically want to be a little more active in those areas. Still, perhaps this more conservative approach has allowed Sarri to get the most out of his squad, through defensive solidity combined with some degree of proficiency in attack? Fuck no. Absolutely not. You have not seen anything yet.

It’s quite clear that this iteration of Lazio is more defensively oriented than previous Sarri-led teams, so how have they performed defensively? Well, they rank 16th in Serie A for expected goals against according to FBref, so that’s not a great start. Diving slightly deeper, Opta have Lazio ranked fourth in Serie A for most shots conceded. Simultaneously, they also have the fourth highest percentage of shots conceded inside their own penalty area. That indicates that they not only concede a ton of shots, but that the shots they concede are typically quite close to the goal. Sure enough, FBref has a stat that specifically measures the average distance of shots conceded, and only Genoa perform worse in this metric. And to really hammer this point home, Lazio also have the fourth highest non-penalty expected goals per shot conceded. So, for as much as Lazio are conservative in their defensive approach, it doesn’t come with the reward of life being particularly difficult for the teams they face. Indeed, the lack of activity in attack also comes with a lack of potency. Lazio rank 14th in Serie A for expected goals (via FBref), and this is one of their more flattering stats as far as the attack goes. Per both Fotmob and Sofascore, only three teams in Serie A have created fewer big chances this season, and two of those are just one big chance behind Lazio. Simultaneously, they have taken the fifth fewest shots in the league, while having the sixth highest average shot distance (via FBref).

With all of this being said, let’s stop beating around the bush and get to the most damning numbers — the ones that are more all-encompassing. Per FBref, Lazio’s expected goal difference per game of -0.38 is shocking in and of itself, but even more so when you consider that it’s significantly inflated by a huge outlier performance against Hellas Verona. In this game, Lazio had an xGD of about +3.2 (FBref only rounds xG to one digit so it’s hard to be too precise). And sure, that game did happen; Lazio pulverized Hellas Verona, and you cannot take that away from them. In fact, in a vacuum, that performance is even more impressive when you consider that Hellas Verona have performed shockingly well in Serie A this season, at least by similar metrics. If you were to exclude their game against Lazio, Verona’s xGD per game of about +0.35 would just barely rank below fifth-ranked Bologna. In any case, if we exclude that performance from Lazio’s season instead — on the basis that they have never come remotely close to replicating it on any other occasion — their xGD per game of roughly -0.74 would rank dead-last. Similarly, xPTS is a metric that accounts for potential outlier performances to a greater degree — a result can never be worth more than three points, nor can it be worth less than zero points — and by Understat’s data, Lazio rank 16th in Serie A in this metric. By Opta’s data? They rank dead-last. They think Lazio is the worst team in Serie A.

A football club in hell

I’m going to go off-topic for a second here. My articles on this platform are usually egregiously long; far too long to reasonably expect anyone to read them. This is clearly something I am aware of, and I tend to justify it with the argument that I write on here for my own enjoyment, but maybe this is an issue worth addressing nonetheless. A big part of the issue may be an inability to properly balance the micro perspective with the macro perspective. This brings us back to this article, because so far it has merely focused on Lazio’s poor performances this season, but — I’m sorry — we have to widen the perspective here.

I have already written about how utterly depressing Lazio’s state of affairs are in the past, but some points bear repeating. First of all, as far back as Understat’s xG database extends (the 2014–15), Lazio’s underlying numbers have rarely ever even been close to a Champions League level. Instead of going through the seasons one by one, I have provided two graphs below.

A few things stand out here. First of all, as alluded to, the consistency of Lazio’s mediocrity is remarkable. As for the club allegedly being in a depressing state, well, that is admittedly something which should primarily be determined by the fans, and the fans probably don’t care about the level of performances if the results are good. As such, the Inzaghi years surely brought some wonderful memories — including the Coppa Italia victory in 2019 — and even the 2022–23 season under Sarri will have been a blast. Still, how is it possible that Lazio have peaked as a Europa League caliber team over the past decade, in terms of their underlying numbers? It’s particularly disappointing when you consider the talent they had on their hands; Inzaghi on the bench, first of all, but also the likes of Luis Alberto, Ciro Immobile and Sergej Milinković-Savić on the pitch. As many have remarked, one essential issue with Lazio in this era has been Claudio Lotito’s refusal to sell any of his best players, along with his simultaneous refusal to invest any meaningful resources into the club. The result has been a number of teams with some sensational high-end talent in a few positions, but a thorough lack of quality in most positions. With all due disrespect, that is how you end up with Ștefan Radu as your all-time leader in appearances.

With all of this in mind, how shocking was it that Lazio were suddenly a Champions League caliber team for much of last season? In fact, I had predicted that the true severity of the issues around the club would be exposed in a profoundly disastrous season that year. After all, the abrupt resignation of Igor Tudor and subsequent hiring of the unaccomplished, then-60-year old Marco Baroni felt like quite the omen. For the first time in a long time, Lazio’s sporting situation had some life in it — they were performing at an abnormally high level, and several new signings had hit the ground running under a new coach. Alas, the results didn’t always reflect this, other teams fighting for European spots were simultaneously overperforming, key injuries would hit the team hard, the team subsequently regressed as the season went on, and Bologna’s shocking Coppa Italia triumph would ultimately ensure Lazio’s failure to qualify for any European competitions whatsoever. Add a 6–0 loss to Inter and a 5–0 loss to Bologna to the equation, and it was largely a miserable experience for Lazio fans. From a sporting lens, it was their best season in years.

Marco Baroni would be fired following his debut season at Lazio

No matter how you spin it, the last year or so has been really tough on Lazio. Last season had its sporting merits, but the fans were hardly enjoying themselves, and things didn’t exactly get better once Marco Baroni was fired and Maurizio Sarri returned to the club — as I have clearly demonstrated above. They have regressed to a cataclysmic degree. The largely unforeseen transfer ban that the club suffered last summer felt symbolic of the state the club is in; how the hell do you end up in that position? It’s not as though Lazio have been big spenders in recent years; quite the opposite in fact. So, with that in mind, how do you address the team — by so many metrics — being one of the worst teams in Serie A, and simultaneously also the third oldest so far this season (via FBref)? It’s all so bleak. Amidst all of this sporting failure, what Lazio fans can’t get over, is the fact that the club failed to sign Mason Greenwood in the summer of 2024. What a disaster! Over the years, Lazio have become notorious as “the Nazi club”, precisely because the club is completely anonymous otherwise — such is the result of Claudio Lotito’s leadership. It’s really not fair to the overwhelming majority of the people who support the club, and you have to feel some sympathy for those people, especially considering that they have to experience the sporting reality that I have just presented.

At the same time, they seemingly can’t help themselves.