Lazio left-back Luca Pellegrini gave a lengthy interview to Il Tempo, discussing the team’s strong start to the season and the changes brought by manager Marco Baroni.
“We’re working well, just as we did during the retreat. What gives us strength is a bit of enthusiasm, but we need to be careful not to cross the line between enthusiasm and presumption,” Pellegrini said. “The manager has done well. He’s an intelligent and very empathetic person, with the qualities to succeed with a team like ours. As a group, we’ve always been strong and cohesive, but the manager has given us a big hand.”
Pellegrini believes that compared to last year, the main change is the involvement of the entire squad in rotations. “A good coach understands the qualities of the group at his disposal. There’s no difference between those who play 5 minutes and those who play 90; the impact is the same. This is the greatest advantage, although of course, those who play 38 games are happier than those who play 5.”
The left-back also noted that the team continues to be undervalued externally: “At the beginning of the year, many words were spent, but no one talked about Lazio. We like it this way; we don’t want to be in this orbit. We leave the pressure to others. We have many limitations, but we’re good at hiding them.”
Pellegrini assures that the locker room atmosphere has profoundly changed this year: “The thing that should never be missing is the hunger to win, like when I made that slide tackle against Porto. You have to fight for every ball. I die for you and you die for me. Pedro is a great example, running like a 20-year-old in recent matches.”
Among his teammates, Pellegrini is closest to Nicolò Rovella, who has become not just an important player for Lazio but also a fan, thanks to Pellegrini’s influence. “He immediately embraced the overwhelming enthusiasm of the fanbase, and I take some credit for that. In his first days in Rome, we were always together, and I gave him a bit of a fan education. I showed him videos of matches that have entered Lazio’s history. Also thanks to other people he met, he’s become an Ultra on the field.”
