Lazio faced Napoli last Sunday and unfortunately came away with a 2-1 defeat at the Stadio San Paolo meaning that Simone Inzaghi’s men have received only seven points from their last five matches.
Lazio’s goalkeeper Thomas Strakosha sat down with Lazio Style Channel after the match to discuss the loss and Lazio’s mentality against big teams: “This defeat hurts, but we do not have to think about the referee and the red. We can not win against a big team, we must understand why. They are strong and they have proved it, but we have to defend ourselves better, even if there are mistakes in football, we have to try to make fewer mistakes than Juventus. We have to stay calm and continue with the desire we demonstrate every day, we work and play as we know. We tried to play well in this game, but then there is also Napoli’s ability. You understand why they are second in the standings. Now we have Juventus waiting for us, maybe we gave them the first half, but we reacted in the second half, we made it 2-1, then we were unlucky with Acerbi’s red card. We are also at the top of the table, I do not think that Lazio is afraid of anyone. We win and we lost, we lost against all the big teams which hurt us, but we are calm, and we are not afraid of anybody, we have not been able to score a second goal. Every game is difficult, for the Champions League there are all teams attacked there, those who make mistakes are normal, but we can concentrate and win the next one.”
The Albanian went on to discuss Acerbi’s red card against Napoli: “Red to Acerbi? For what I saw he touched the ball, then the referee saw what he saw and took out the second yellow. But this is not my job. Surely it affected us because the numerical inferiority put the game in Napoli’s favor. We struggled when it was 11 on 11 when we had 10 it was even worse.”
Strakosha continued on to discuss the team’s upcoming match with Juventus: “Absences against Juventus? We have other strong players who will give us a hand and replace those that are missing. We have more motivation because we played the first one. We will be focused and well prepared because we want to beat them. We have the awareness of wanting to improve when we win, and when we lose, of course, it is normal that you want to improve. We have a manager who will explain it to us and tell us where we are wrong and where we must improve.”
With Lazio now sitting in sixth place behind Roma and AC Milan for the fourth spot, it is imperative that the Biancoceleste get a result this weekend against Juventus.
