Former Lazio team manager Angelo Peruzzi did not look back at his time with the club fondly.
Speaking in an interview with Italian radio broadcaster Radiosei (via La Lazio Siamo Noi) yesterday, the 51-year-old Italian first discussed if he still follows the Biancocelesti and his thoughts on players leaving the Christmas dinner early.
I have seen very few matches, almost none. I don’t follow football that much, I didn’t even like it when I played. My son is a Lazio fan, when my son is at home I see it.
I follow what’s going on, but not regularly, it’s not like I look at the sites every day. I don’t have anything to do with Lazio anymore, if I had still been inside I would have followed them minute by minute.
I’ve heard about the players who left at the Christmas dinner, but they say it wasn’t on purpose. It seems strange to me that players get up and leave, it’s not polite.
With Peruzzi they would have left at 9 instead of 11! Something like that would have made me very angry. I don’t think it would have happened anyway.
Peruzzi discussed his departure from Lazio earlier this year.
There will never be the possibility of a return, but not because of me, but because of president Lotito, it’s the last thing on his mind. He has ten thousand merits, but he has two faults, he is arrogant and he thinks he is anointed by God.
These two flaws distort all the virtues he has, which are a thousand, I don’t doubt that. If I reveal these two faults, do you think he would even call me, no way. No way.
In a club where I’ve worked as a manager for five years, and I think I’ve done something, I leave and they haven’t even made a statement to say that he’s out of my hair, goodbye.
They say anything about players on social media and they couldn’t make a statement like that? If they didn’t, then it was right for me to leave. I’m a bit disappointed, it means that then all my assumptions that I didn’t matter for anything anymore were true.
I don’t know how this situation came about. Lotito has those two faults and the other one in charge with him the same. Because only they know things, the others are all stupid.
He confirmed that the other person he was referring to was sporting director Igli Tare.
Yes. You don’t matter for anything, because they matter. You can’t work as well as you’d like inside, so at a certain point it’s goodbye and thank you.
I also said to the president, if I have to have three permits to get a bucket of paint for the door it means I don’t matter for anything, I’m like the usher. If I ask for a bucket of paint, after three minutes the person who paints the doors has to come.
The 51-year-old Italian highlighted that a return to Lazio in the future seems incredibly unlikely for now.
Unrealistic. I’m very fond of Lazio, the guys and the environment. I was there more than ten years, it was a part of my life.
But I’d go back to the conditions I say, the ones I asked for when I arrived five years ago, in my field I had to move without anyone getting in my way and instead they didn’t let me matter for anything.
They say yes, you can do what you want, but in the end they don’t let you matter for anything. From when I started five years ago until June last year, they gradually put you aside, not shamelessly, but they isolate you wherever you go.
You can’t work that way. You think you matter, then you realise you don’t matter anymore and it’s pointless to go on.
He touched on when he realised that he no longer mattered at the club.
I don’t know, it’s not that I woke up in the morning wondering whether I mattered or not. I go to do my job, I try to do it in the best possible way, and then sometimes you succeed and sometimes you don’t.
And sometimes you don’t get it. And sometimes they don’t want you to do it. They’ll say I’m feeling sorry for myself but I’m not. I’m not here to tell you this and that because these are things that should remain in the Lazio dressing room.
Peruzzi spoke about sporting director Tare, his relationship with him and how he works.
I don’t want to fight. In these years most of the time I was together with Igli. It’s not a question of friendship, I’m not angry with Tare.
I’d say I work in a certain way and the way I worked, honestly, you couldn’t work anymore because the conditions weren’t right.
He revealed how difficult it actually is to leave Lazio for good.
It’s very difficult to leave Lazio. Twice I left Lazio and twice I left the money there and someone even told me I was a son of a b*tch because I had to go to Inter with Simone Inzaghi.
Twice I left the money, both as a manager and as a coach I left a year’s contract twice. For the love of Lazio as a player, because at that time if I had stayed there as a player and as a manager I could only do damage.
Because I know how I am. I have a lot of faults, of course, I do a lot of bad things but I see things from a point of view that maybe others don’t see. I’m very touchy and it’s logical that when someone does me wrong I find it hard to forgive them. It’s not a question of power.
The 51-year-old Italian noted his confusion regarding his role and what work he was supposed to do.
What was I supposed to do? Just to warm the chair? What was my role? I don’t know. In five years, at the end of the day, I ask myself what have I done at Lazio?
Apart from the things I did, what did they want me to do? I was someone who was there having won everything because, I don’t want to be presumptuous, but I won everything, but when I said something someone would turn up their nose at it or wouldn’t take it into consideration.
So if those who are in there have won everything, that’s fine. However they haven’t won anything because they’ve only won three cups.
The former Lazio team manager highlighted how his opinion on goalkeepers was hardly ever taken into account, despite his experience.
We’re talking about goalkeepers, I played twenty years in goal and I know something more than others, on the other hand, I didn’t understand anything if I was talking about goalkeepers, so what are we talking about?
Between the youth team and the first team when I was there we bought four goalkeepers and after buying them they said to me ‘We bought this one, what do you think of him?’.
But what can I say, you bought him anyway. After the game Strakosha or whoever made a mistake and I said that in my opinion it wasn’t the goalkeeper’s mistake but the defence’s mistake and they said: ‘But no Strakosha made a mistake’ so they speak as goalkeepers, it’s useless for me to speak.
He touched on his relationship with president Claudio Lotito and how there was no project in Rome.
I’m not a pimp who would call the president every day and say ‘President, we have to do it this way’ or ‘How good is the president’, I’m not capable of doing these things.
I would call the president once or twice a week to tell him this or that had happened. At a certain point we’d come to the point where he’d call me for crap.
Planning in Lazio has never existed, and that bothered me. Five years ago when I arrived they told me we have to do a project but it never happened.
Peruzzi discussed his position at Lazio and how the lines between roles were blurred.
I never knew what I had to do because if you expanded a bit more you were forced to go back into your boundaries, you didn’t know what to do because everyone does everything and everyone does nothing.
There are no pre-established roles in there, whoever comes in the morning says what you have to do, then at the end the president comes and says you have not understood anything, you have to do this.
It doesn’t work like that, you waste time. Look at the signings, you have to wait six months to sign a player. If you like the player you buy him.
But the player must be followed as he should be followed. It’s right that the manager does his job but if you have to buy a goalkeeper it’s right that I have my say. That’s what they did with Reina, Proto and Strakosha. They did the same with the youth players. The conditions weren’t right.
Finally, Peruzzi made a comparison with Juventus and noted how Tare took on many roles within the club.
It turns out that when Moggi was there he was the sporting director, then there was a treasurer and then the one who said what had to be done and then there was a team manager.
There was no invasion of the roles. Tare’s role is sporting director and he’s in charge of everything there when the president isn’t there.
It’s not something between me and Tare, it’s something that concerns how Lazio is organised, the structure. I have nothing against him, I was there for five years and I did well but we had reached the point where I was no longer comfortable in that environment, but not for Tare.
