Lazio coach Maurizio Sarri has been left feeling undermined following Claudio Lotito’s public call for unity within the team.
The 63-year-old Italian coach is not on the best terms with sporting director Igli Tare and the pair recently had a public clash over the team’s chances of qualifying for the Champions League this season, with the former suggesting it would take a miracle and the latter openly disagreeing.
Lotito looked to resolve the tension and released a public statement on Monday, calling for everyone to stick together and remain focused on the goals for the season.
As reported by Corriere dello Sport (via LazioNews24), Sarri was disappointed by Lotito’s statement, feeling even more isolated in the Lazio environment.
The statement produced two undesirable effects alongside the supposed call for unity, weakening Sarri’s position in front of the squad and confirming the distance between coach and sporting director, something that had been rumoured since the summer.
Below is Lotito’s statement in full:
Lazio are a joint stock company listed on the stock exchange and an important reality in the world of football, with a great history, but today they’re first and foremost a big family.
And as in all families you can have different visions, on which it is also appropriate to discuss, within the club, to arrive at the best solutions. Certainly, in the opinions expressed publicly in these days there is a constructive and growing intent.
As is well known, I rarely intervene directly in the dynamics of the club, placing full trust in those who manage them: in the technical leadership as in the sporting management.
At the beginning of the season, we identified together the sporting objectives for this season: ambitious and at the same time realistic, with the aim of always improving, following up on a technical project that must necessarily tend to evolve in placings and prospects.
This is why the squad has been reinforced, with high-level purchases that are already making a strong contribution to the quality of the game and the position in the table.
The same has been done with the corporate structure, integrated with new figures. Today Lazio are in full race for the seasonal objectives, they’ve shown they can compete with all the direct competitors for the top roles, they’re responding on and off the pitch to those who would like to relegate them to other stages.
It will be at the end of the season that we will draw the conclusions of the work done, after having fought match by match, until the last, for the achievement of the set goals and for the best possible result. Tensions must be put aside, lest they be exaggerated by those who want to destabilise the environment.
Team, staff and management: all together for the good of Lazio. As one does in a real family.
