Champions League: Lazio Crash Out

By: Martha | December 11th, 2007

Look at that old man hair. Man, that hurt. Lazio looked good for about 12 minutes — tough, sharp enough, totally unintimidated. But then rumored Roma target Julio Baptisa scored with an unstoppable pile-drive from outside the box, and they went into shock. By the time they’d come out of it, they’d given the ball away cheaply in the midfield, Real had earned a corner, and Raul had headed home the second goal. Game over. Lazio spent the rest of the half playing hard-working, dark blue cones to Real’s stunningly fluid attack, and being pretty much torn apart.

To be fair, Lazio were far from the lifeless crew they were against Inter a week ago, but they were just hugely overmatched by a very determined team that possessed more quality and inventiveness than the Italians at pretty much every position. Real can look as ragged as the next team when they’re flat, but they were on today and were a pleasure to watch, particularly Baptisa, Raul and Wesley Sneijder, who was an absolute menace. On the other side of the ball, when they did attack Lazio were hopeful rather than incisive, and there were rarely bodies in the box to receive the crosses that resulted from the periodic intelligent through balls to the strikers (often from the foot of young Frenchman Mourad Meghni, who’s had an awfully good week).

Robinho made it 3-0 to Real shortly before the interval thanks to some great work by Ruud van Nistelrooy in the Lazio box, and the margin enabled the hosts to take their foot off the gas in the second half. They took off Sneijder (Thank god.) and replaced him with Arjen Robben (Oh dear.), and also switched Robinho out for Guti. The subs, clearly, did nothing to decrease the quality of the Real side, but they were very much content to sit back and attack on the counter, rather than rushing forward en masse as they had in the first half. Honestly, it was too painful to watch much of the second half very carefully, but Robben was doing his usual “I don’t care who else is out here, I must score” thing, and Grandpa Marco Ballotta made a couple of fantastic saves, including one from Robben, and another from Guti very late-on.

Lazio’s effort eventually led to a goal, though, when a long pass over the top by Massimo Mutarelli fell to Tommas Rocchi, who played a perfect ball across the box for Goran Pandev to slide home. (He also slid himself right into the post and had to leave the match; the last thing Lazio need is another serious injury.) There was even more excitement late, when Pepe was ruled to have handled the ball in the box, but Iker Casillias saved Rocchi’s penalty as well as Roberto Baronio’s rebound shot, and it was all over: No Champions League, not even any UEFA Cup, and Lazio are left to concentrate on staying up.