Summarising April and Looking Ahead
While we’d been busy turning Inter’s April into something resembling a support group, Alex had quietly continued putting together another impressive season with Fiorentina.
His Champions League adventure came to an end in the quarter-finals against Paris Saint-Germain, losing on penalties. Naturally, I asked whether he’d prepared for them in training.
He looked at me blankly.
Apparently he hadn’t realised that was something you could actually do.
I tried my best to be sympathetic.
I wasn’t.
Domestically, though, he’d found another way. Fiorentina somehow dragged themselves past Napoli in the Coppa Italia after scoring twice in the final five minutes to force extra time before finding yet another winner right at the death. It was classic Football Manager. The sort of match where, had it happened against me, I would almost certainly have accused the game of scripting it.
Instead, it meant we’d be meeting in the Coppa Italia Final.
One of us was guaranteed silverware.
More importantly, one of us would have to listen to the other talk about it for the next six months.
Away from the cup competitions, the squad had quietly evolved into something I hadn’t really planned.
Victor Osimhen still wasn’t the unstoppable goalscoring machine I’d imagined when I signed him. He’d improved as the season progressed and still chipped in with important goals, but changing the system had taken the burden away from him. We no longer needed one player to score every week because goals were coming from all over the pitch.
If Chelsea really wanted him in the summer, they were welcome to ask.
They’d just need to bring at least fifty million pounds with them.
Preferably more.
Alex doesn’t need to know that, though.
One player whose future was already decided was Giuliano Simeone. After an outstanding loan spell the previous year, his second season never really got going. When three clubs simultaneously offered £41.5 million, all from Saudi Arabia, I briefly wondered whether they’d been watching the right player.
I decided not to ask any questions.
Sometimes football gives you a gift.
The sensible thing to do is accept it before anyone changes their mind.
At the other end of the pitch, however, I wouldn’t have swapped my defence for anyone’s.
Sebastián Boselli had quietly become the cornerstone of everything we did. Playing on the left-hand side of a back three, he seemed to win every duel that mattered, while Aleksandar Stanković continued looking less like a converted midfielder and more like someone who had spent his entire career organising defensive lines.
Even Ibrahim Bamba, whose first few months had occasionally resembled controlled panic, had grown into the role. By spring, the three of them had developed the sort of understanding that managers spend years trying to build.
Behind them stood Jonas Urbig.
In front of them stood Hakan Çalhanoğlu.
Looking through the spine of the team, I realised we’d accidentally assembled a squad that simply didn’t know when to panic.
I joked to Alex that my players had enormous balls.
Steel ones.
The more I watched them in Europe, the less it felt like a joke.
The summer will undoubtedly bring changes. It always does. Matheus Nunes has already agreed to join permanently after I beat Alex to his signature yet again, despite Alex making a late attempt to hijack the deal. Apparently Nunes wasn’t interested in Florence in the slightest, which I considered another small victory.
But this doesn’t feel like a squad in need of rebuilding.
It feels like one that’s only just discovered how good it can become.
And with Taty Castellanos quietly passing the twenty-goal mark while everyone else obsessed over Osimhen, perhaps that sums this Lazio side up better than anything.
The stars may grab the headlines.
This team wins because everybody contributes.
Next time: Rome derby against lowly Roma and then CL semi-final against Liverpool.