Lazio gained three points on Saturday to lead Serie A ahead of Juventus. What a brilliant first 20 minutes. Lazio came up 2-0 early taking advantage of an early build-up for the first goal and a fortunate deflection for the second.
Within just the second minute of the game, Lazio played great one-touch attacking from Luis Alberto passing horizontally to Ciro Immobile at the top of the box, who sliced three defenders with a pass to Joaquin Correa in the box, who somehow beat three defenders and took a wide-open shot that he really should have put away. Unfortunately, it went just wide.
Shortly after, Lazio intercepted the ball in midfield and countered with Immobile attacking on the right, putting the ball far post on the ground with not enough emphasis on it, aiming just past the post.
Then, minutes later, Immobile redeemed himself providing an assist to Luis Alberto, who smashed it in the back of the net from the top of the box to bring it 1-0 in 18 minutes.
Bologna then got an opportunity from point-blank from Roberto Soriano, but Lukasz Skorupski came up big with the save. Soriano was looking for power when he really should’ve passed it to the corner.
No less than three minutes later did Luis Alberto provide an assist to Joaquin Correa, who received a fortunate deflection catching the keeper off balance, bringing the score to 2-0.
For a defensive league, this was quite an exciting first half.
In the 51st minute, Bologna received a corner, and it was a bizarre finish at that. Left back Stefano Denswil crashed the box unmarked and drilled a header at the keeper from three yards out, the keeper made the save and Denswil somehow managed to pinball it back with his shoulder/chin into the back of the net. Whatever works.
But, the play went to VAR, and the goal was called back. That might’ve been the most honest use of VAR I’ve seen yet this year in Serie A.
In the 61st minute, Immobile was played through at midfield on a breakaway, made a chip over the keeper from the left side of play and scuffed it out of bounds. Even the announcer thought he left his shooting boots at home. Yikes.
In the 67th minute, Andrea Poli dumped the ball into the box from the left. Rodrigo Palacio, fading backward toward the end line facing the field, headed the ball into the box. Lazio defender Stefan Radu laughably tried to head the ball clear while standing six yards in the box. It launched maybe three yards forward for Takehiro Tomiyasu to volley it far post on the ground to make it 2-1.
Right?
Nope. This time a SECOND goal was taken back by VAR. What could’ve easily been 2-2 by now is still 2-0. Palacio was offside though, I admit. The VAR kills me, it ruins the flow of play; it takes way too long in my opinion.
The rest of the second half was more or less mundane; nothing exciting happened.
Lazio went on to win 2-0 and took the top of the table for now with 62 points to Juventus’ 60 points. Any team that can stay ahead of Juventus has a fan in me.
