(The tape recorder clicks on. It’s June. There’s a Coppa Italia winner’s medal sitting on the desk, a Champions League semi-final programme underneath it, and a transfer budget on the screen that has already mostly disappeared. My phone lights up with another message from Alex. I turn it face down.)
Act I: Something Worth Keeping
For most of my time at Lazio, every summer has felt like a rebuilding job. There was always another position that desperately needed fixing, another player who wasn’t quite good enough, another transfer window where the squad in my head looked considerably better than the one actually available on the tactics screen. This summer feels different.
We finished fourth, qualified for the Champions League again, won the Coppa Italia by beating Alex’s Fiorentina 2-0 in the final and somehow made it all the way to the Champions League semi-finals. Manchester City went out to us. Inter went out to us twice, once in Europe and once in that ridiculous Coppa semi-final shootout. Liverpool eventually ended the European run at Anfield, but it took extra time to do it. For the first time, I’m looking at this Lazio squad and thinking that perhaps the smartest thing I can do is not change very much at all.
There’s a spine here now. Urbig has been everything I hoped he would be when I spent £30 million on him in January and then some. Boselli has become untouchable on the left of the back three, while Stanković’s emergency conversion into a centre-back somehow ended with him looking like he’d played there his entire life. Even Bamba, who spent the first half of last season giving me several reasons to reconsider some of my life choices, settled down and became part of a genuinely excellent back three.
Further forward, Saelemaekers — the free agent who chose my contract over Alex’s at the start of last season — has made the right wing-back position his own and chipped in with goals and assists. Taty finished with more than 20 goals. Akhomach became a Spanish international. Osimhen, for all my complaints about his finishing, quietly ended up with 15 goals and five assists.
So the plan this summer is relatively simple: improve the squad without destroying the thing that made it good.
Which, given my transfer history, may be the most ambitious plan I’ve ever had.
Act II: Alex Shows His Hand
Giorgio Scalvini was someone I had been thinking about for a while. I knew him from my time at Atalanta, he knew me, and at 24 he looked almost perfect for the system I’d settled on. Six-foot-four, excellent in the air, strong, quick enough, comfortable with the ball and capable of playing either as a conventional centre-back or the ball-playing role. The idea was to wait until the season finished and then make my move.
Then Alex bid for him.
There was also interest from Manchester City, but once Alex had shown his hand I couldn’t really sit around anymore. I went in as well. Atalanta wanted £50 million, rising to £74 million, which was an enormous amount of money for us, but Simeone’s £41.5 million move to Saudi Arabia had given me the means to do it. A player who had been excellent on loan the previous season, dreadful this one and whom I actively wanted to sell had somehow funded one of the best Italian centre-backs in the game.
Then came the contracts.
Alex wanted him. I wanted him. Scalvini had a decision to make.
He chose Lazio.
Perhaps those years together at Atalanta mattered. We were already acquaintances and he knew exactly what he was getting with me. Perhaps winning a trophy and reaching a Champions League semi-final helped. Perhaps he just preferred the colour blue. I don’t particularly care. He signed a four-year contract worth £135,000 a week and will arrive on the 1st of July as one of the highest-paid players at the club.
I imagine Alex was disappointed.
I haven’t asked.
The exciting part isn’t simply adding Scalvini to the defence, either. His arrival potentially solves two positions at once. Stanković was magnificent at centre-back last season, but it was never supposed to be his permanent home. Scalvini can step into that back three alongside Boselli and Bamba, allowing Stanković to move back into midfield and eventually inherit the defensive midfield role from Cataldi, who remains my captain but isn’t getting any younger.
Sometimes spending £50 million is actually financial prudence if you think about it for long enough.
Act III: The £55 Million Sale That Wasn’t
I had also prepared myself for the possibility that Victor Osimhen might leave.
Chelsea came in with £55 million, which triggered his release clause. In truth, I was quite happy with it. Osimhen’s first season hadn’t been disastrous by any reasonable measure — 15 goals and five assists is a perfectly respectable return — but I’d signed him expecting him to become the focal point of the team. The main man. The striker everything flowed through.
He never really became that.
There were too many missed chances and too many matches where I found myself waiting for the version of Osimhen I thought I had bought to appear. Eventually I changed the formation and stopped making the entire attack dependent on him. Ironically, that probably helped him. The goals started arriving a little more regularly and he ended the season with numbers that looked considerably better than the experience of watching him had sometimes felt.
Still, £55 million was £55 million. Chelsea could have him.
Osimhen apparently disagreed.
He rejected their contract, told me he was happy at Lazio and decided to stay.
So here we are. The striker I was prepared to sell for £55 million has voluntarily chosen another year of me complaining when he puts a one-on-one directly into the goalkeeper.
And perhaps that’s not a bad thing. Fifteen goals and five assists in a season where I spent several months wondering whether he could finish his dinner isn’t a terrible baseline. If he improves on that next year, there may still be a genuinely excellent Lazio striker in there.
I just need him to find it slightly more often.
Act IV: The Free Transfer Alex Couldn’t Even Hijack
Scalvini wasn’t the only player Alex and I both wanted.
Matheus Nunes had spent last season on loan with us from Manchester City and had quietly become an important part of the team. He played 21 times in Serie A, scoring three and assisting four, added another 13 Champions League appearances and gave us exactly the sort of technical quality and experience the midfield had sometimes lacked.
His contract was expiring.
I offered him one.
Naturally, Alex tried too.
Except this time there wasn’t even really a fight. Nunes wouldn’t speak to Fiorentina.
He agreed to join Lazio permanently on a free transfer.
The contract isn’t cheap. £130,000 a week, plus a £3.2 million signing-on fee and some fairly healthy bonuses. But there was no transfer fee, I already know he works in the system and, at 29, I’m getting a player described as a world-class midfielder without having to spend £30 or £40 million acquiring him.
There is also a slightly awkward footnote to all this. Nunes was suspended for both of my final matches against Alex last season: the Coppa Italia final and the league game at the Olimpico. Fabbian replaced him for both. We won the final 2-0 and drew the league game 2-2, and Fabbian was excellent when I needed him.
I’ve been saying for a while that he deserves more minutes.
Unfortunately, I’ve now signed another midfielder.
I’ll work that one out later.
Act V: Champions League Money Isn’t Infinite Money
The Champions League run changed the finances enormously. A semi-final appearance brings in the sort of money Lazio simply weren’t making when I arrived, and we finished the season with the club balance sitting at around £33 million and more than £53 million profit for the year. We’re comfortably on course to pass UEFA’s financial regulations as well, which is a pleasant change from staring at red numbers and wondering which member of the squad I can sell without anyone noticing.
I’d like another striker, ideally a fourth option who gives me something similar to Pellegrini — a proper physical presence who can change the shape of a game. I’d like more quality and depth at left wing-back. Cataldi is getting older, although Stanković moving back into midfield gives me a ready-made succession plan there.
What I don’t want is another revolution.
Urbig stays. Boselli stays. Bamba has earned his place. Scalvini comes in. Stanković can move back into midfield. Nunes is now ours permanently. Saelemaekers has made the right flank his. Akhomach continues to develop. Taty has become the goalscorer I can actually rely upon. Osimhen, apparently, would rather stay here than play for Chelsea.
This is a team that went into the Etihad and survived. A team that beat Manchester City 5-1 at the Olimpico. A team that eliminated Inter from Europe, then eliminated them from the Coppa Italia after surviving extra time with ten men and scoring five perfect penalties. A team that reached a Champions League semi-final and won a trophy.
They’ve got enormous balls. I’ve said it before and I stand by it.
The additions of Urbig and Hakan in January only seemed to make them tougher, and Scalvini and Nunes should strengthen that core rather than replace it. There will be another signing or two if I can find the money, but I’m not interested in spending for the sake of it.
For three seasons I’ve been trying to build a Lazio team capable of competing with the best sides in Italy and occasionally punching one of Europe’s giants in the mouth.
I think I’ve finally got one.
Now I just need to avoid fucking it up.