Lazio v Torino: That Rosina Guy, He’s Not Bad

By: Martha | August 25th, 2007

Ale the younger First, and most importantly: This game featured a female announcer on RAI and a female linesman. And the latter was wearing shorts, not the horrible skort they used to have to wear! Mark my words, kids are lining up for sleigh rides in hell today.

Moving on. Considering that one of the teams finished third last year and the other just avoided the drop, we could have done a lot worse that a sometimes-lively 2-2 draw. In fact, after a first 10 minutes in which they seemed determined to give the ball away the moment they won it, Torino acquitted themselves fairly well in the first half. They started passing to the right team, using Eugenio Corini as much as humanly possible and even created some vaguely useful attacks.

Marco Ballotta, Lazio’s ancient, stop-gap keeper looked shaky at best; it must have been killing Toro not to be able to put the ball on goal more often, because he gave every indication of being willing to let several past him, if challenged. Eventually, though, Alessandro Rosina released a shot so sweet the keeper didn’t even have to flap useless at the ball for it to go in: The ball rolled to Rosina outside the box on the left and he peek at the keeper before the ball arrived, took a touch, and lofted it up from about 20 yards. The ball drifted over the keeper’s head (he didn’t even bother to jump, so perfect was the chip) and nestled into the back of the net. Magic.

The first half ended 1-0 (with both team having lost people to injury, the worst a leg fracture suffered by Lazio’s Modibo Diakhite), but Lazio came out in the second half and made their obvious superiority pay, scoring two quick goals and getting one called back for a questionable offside (by the male linesman, thankfully). It was hard to tell whether Lazio are a very slick attacking side, or if Torino are just shockingly bad in the back, but the visitors were scrambling practically every time Lazio came at them; even with nine and 10 men behind the ball they were still overrun on a regular basis. For their part, though Lazio surely couldn’t cup up better sides as easily as they did Toro, they nevertheless worked some nice one-touch exchanges in attack, and their strikers are wildly aggressive going forward which is fun to watch.

Torino secured the tie on a laughably free header, and will surely be pleased to have picked up a point from an (injury-plagued) team most assume will finish in the top six.

[Thanks to Marco for the Rosina goal clip.]