The Lazioeven without particularly shining, snatches a very important 1-0 in the Monday Night against Sampdoria and returns to the Champions League positions. A goal, beautiful, by Luis Alberto on which also Maurice Sarri he vented the pressure, cheering for these precious three points. “It was also normal that tonight we weren’t at our peak – the coach commented to Sky Sport -. We had 5-6 players who had played on Thursday, plus we forced the return of guys who had had some serious problems like Milinkovic -Savic, Zaccagni, Pedro I liked the attitude of the team, except for ten minutes of heeling at the start of the second half. It wasn’t a match played at 100% of our availability, but a serious one. This is a dirty win, even if we had 8-9 clear scoring chances, so it could have been a clean victory”. And on the continuity expressed by Luis Alberto in recent weeks, he added: “It’s not that I convinced Luis Alberto about changing roles, he knows what I’m asking and at one point in the season I saw him train in a totally different way. With a determination that I hadn’t seen in him before and I’m happy that by changing the way he trains, he’s having an extraordinary time.”
“Napoli is strong, but we won’t change our philosophy. The fans? I feel like one of them”
On Friday, the Biancocelesti will face leaders Napoli. “Lately we’ve been playing against teams that played a couple of days before us, but I also understand that organizing the calendar in this bedlam of matches is difficult,” said Sarri. We go there and we will play it, we know they are stronger but we can’t change our philosophies because we play against a stronger team. This year they are clearly above all the others. They pursued a policy of extreme courage: they renounced young people who had done very well but who were of a certain age, they went to get young players and someone unknown. Giuntoli is a master in this, I had great faith that he would do such a job, but finding such strong players was difficult to predict. I was a Napoli fan as a child, so I feel like one of them.” Finally, a joke about Lazio supporters: “The fans always give us a hand, lately when we play at home the atmosphere is always like this. And even away from home, in Romania there were 500 Lazio fans. We can’t ask for more, if they continue like this they will certainly bring us points.”
Luis Alberto: “It’s important to have won despite not playing well. Now I play in a different role”
We knew from before that the match was complicated, they are a physical team who put intensity and they don’t deserve to be in that position. For me they have good players. Then we weren’t at the level of our last performance, when you’re like this you have to do something more and you also need the luck to score these goals. I think that since we got back in December there’s been a different attitude in the team: even when you lose, it stays there, it doesn’t give up, then in football you lose and you win. Today was also important because we didn’t play very well and we won, before we lacked this thing. He’s not a new Luis, I’ve always played a lot, right now I’m physically fine and the coach who lets me play likes it. I’ve changed my way of playing, now I’m less free and I need to have more balance, that’s what they ask me and I have to do it this way.