Lazio coach Maurizio Sarri believes the 4-0 victory over Milan was ‘perhaps the best performance’ since he joined the club. The Biancocelesti have hit their stride in recent weeks, even without talismanic striker Ciro Immobile in the side, and appear to be fully adapting to Sarri’s tactics on the pitch.
Lazio took the lead through Sergej Milinkovic-Savic followed by Mattia Zaccagni’s tap-in. Luis Alberto converted from the spot before Felipe Anderson finished an excellent team move.
Speaking to DAZN after the game, Sarri explained his tactical choices, approach to the match and discussed why he thinks it might be the performance since he joined the club:
“As soon as the referee blew the final whistle, I thought we have a very difficult match coming up against Fiorentina.
We are in a wonderful, passionate, but also very strange place to work, because a few days ago we were treated like the worst team in Italy and tonight the best team in Italy. Getting the lads to maintain their balance right now is the most important aspect.
Title challenge? We cannot have ideas like that, only dreams. As I said, the important thing is to focus on the next game. We must not look at things long-term, we just have to take it one game at a time and maintain the same adrenaline we had tonight. Unfortunately, that has often been our downfall.
One of the aspects we worked on to prepare the game was making the most of the Milan’s tendency to open up spaces between defenders, knowing Felipe Anderson’s movement could create even more spaces. We did it pretty well.
In the first half, we also did well creating chances by playing out from the back. We hope to get Ciro back soon, and we’ll see the test results tomorrow, and then we can perhaps give a rest to those who are playing constantly up there.
I am accustomed to a packed fixture list, but I don’t like it, because that takes away the greatest joy I have in this sport, which is being on the training ground during the week. I had a season in England with 65 competitive games, so considerably more than we will have this time.
It was perhaps the best performance since I’ve been here, but recently the players have been willing to sacrifice themselves for the team in a way that honestly surprised me. If we can remove that tendency to drop points in silly fashion against sides who are on paper inferior, then we can do even better.”
We never hid, nor stood up, we just said that we would do the maximum of our abilities and see what happens. I already expressed my opinion that there are on paper other teams better equipped, but we still take it one game at a time and see what comes of it.
We did a favour for ourselves more than anything, as last season Milan caused us huge problems in all three games and we always lost, so this was a sign of how much Lazio have grown. If Napoli are doing well, it can only make me happy.”
