Lazio fought hard but it wasn’t enough to overcome Porto, with the 2-2 draw eliminating the Biancocelesti from the Europa League.
Ciro Immobile found the opener early in the first half but the Roman club couldn’t keep up this intensity and they suffered a painful comeback. Danilo Cataldi’s goal in the dying minutes of the match was not enough to turn over the result, and so Lazio have now crashed out of the Europa League.
Below are the two squads in Lazio’s 2-2 draw with Porto:
- Lazio (4-3-3): Strakosha; Marusic, Luiz Felipe, Patric, Radu (54′ Hysaj); Milinkovic, Leiva (54′ Cataldi), Luis Alberto; Felipe Anderson, Immobile, Pedro (71′ Raul Moro).
- Porto: (4-4-2): Diogo Costa; Bruno Costa, Mbemba, Pepe, Zaidu; Otavio, Uribe, Vitinha (78′ Gruijc), Pepe (68′ Joao Mario); Taremi (78′ Evanilson), Toni Martinez (56′ Galeno).
Lazio started off the match on the front foot, having a number of early chances thanks to Immobile and Luis Alberto.
In the 18th minute, Immobile thought he’d found the opening goal, but it was chalked off due to offside. He was rewarded for his positive performance a minute later, however, when he found the opening goal after a mistake by Pepe.
Only a few minutes later, the Italian star had another goal disallowed after Felipe Anderson was offside during a deadly counter attack.
In the 28th minute, Porto were awarded a penalty after a Sergej Milinkovic-Savic foul on Mehdi Taremi. The Iranian scored the resulting spot kick, tying things up at 1-1.
The Portuguese side had a few more chances in the first half and it seemed as if the wind had been taken out of Lazio’s sails a little.
The second half saw both sides shared a number of relatively dangerous chances, but it wasn’t until the 68th minute that a breakthrough was found. Porto found the back of the net after some beautiful play from Taremi, who put in a well-placed pass to Mateus Uribe. The Colombian made no mistake, making it 2-1.
Lazio tried to get back into the match but Porto did well to limit their chances. In the 94th minute, Cataldi scored a consolation goal after an Immobile shot bounced off the post. This wasn’t enough to keep the Biancocelesti’s hopes alive, however, as it was still 4-3 on aggregate.
