Richard Hough, author of Verona Campione, the Miracle of 1985, reflects on a humiliating defeat and meets a Lazio fan trying to follow in Tim Parks’ footsteps by attending every game of the season.
In last week’s Notes from Verona column, I observed how “a point on the road exceeded most pre-match expectations” as Hellas ground out an uninspiring 1-1 draw against Udinese.
Last night, all that pre-season apprehension was exacerbated, as Hellas bombed 4-0 to Lazio in Rome.
Verona were a goal down before I even had the chance to crack open my first can of Peroni, as Nicolò Rovella sliced open the Hellas defence with a speculative lob forward and Matteo Guendouzi slotted home from the edge of the penalty area. With six Hellas defenders inside the box, it was a worrying omen that none of them could get close enough to the French midfielder to prevent him from pulling the trigger.
Another defensive calamity followed by a sublime Taty Castellanos assist (his second of the evening) gave Mattia Zaccagni, a product of the Hellas Verona finishing school, the opportunity to double the home side’s lead with barely ten minutes on the clock. By then I knew it was going to be one of those nights.
In the company of a couple of young Inter fans, I was watching on DAZN’s diretta gol service and it seemed like every time they cut from Milan to Rome, Lazio scored. Though Hellas carved out a couple of chances in the first half, they were lacklustre in comparison, and it was the home side who added a third when Taty himself got on the end of a Rovella cross as half-time approached.
With a rout on the cards, I was just glad I hadn’t made the journey south with the 399 members of the Hellas Army who had travelled to the Eternal City, and was instead watching at home from the comfort of my subterranean taverna.
One guy who was at Rome’s Stadio Olimpico last night was Scott Balaam, Tennent’s Super aficionado, die-hard Lazio fan and driving force behind Calcio Amore. Scott is planning to go to every Lazio game this season, home and away, and pre-match I caught up with him to find out what inspired him to take on such a monumental challenge.
Scott moved to Florence to join his wife in 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. He’d previously spend a year in Latina and a couple of years in Rome and was keen to return to Italy for a better way of life after a health scare. Faced with a choice between Napoli and Florence, Scott opted for Florence and he hasn’t looked back since.
Unlike many UK-based fans whose allegiance to Lazio can be traced back to the arrival of a certain Paul Gasgoine (the troubled Englishman signed for Lazio for a fee of £5.5 million in 1992 during the height of Gazamania, his debut against Genoa was televised live in Britain as well as Italy), Scott has a different origin story.
While in Latina, working as an English teacher during the 2002–03 academic year, a student named Valentino came into Scott’s class brandishing a copy of La Voce della Nord, the Lazio fanzine, and pointed to an article about English derbies. Among them was the Watford–Luton rivalry (Scott was a lifelong Watford fan). Reading that fanzine, something clicked.
A week later, Valentino couldn’t make it to the match and asked Scott if he wanted to use his abbonamento (season ticket). Scott agreed and from that moment he was hooked. For the rest of the season, he made the short journey from Latina to Rome for Lazio’s home games. He even attended his first Derby della Capitale, a memorable 1-1 draw with Cassano and Stakovic on the scoresheet.
Back in 2000/2001, Scott had attended 44 of 46 Watford fixtures that season. This season with Lazio he’s hoping to go one better and attend all 38 league fixtures, home and away. For me such an exploit recalls the seminal Tim Parks book, A Season with Verona. Back then, even with regular Sunday afternoon kick-off times, such a feat was challenging enough. Now, with fixtures dispersed across the weekend and beyond, such an endeavour is certainly not for the faint hearted, and barely even possible without a sympathetic wife and employer!
Away trips to places like Cagliari and Lecee pose significant logistical (not to mention financial) challenges, while midweek games can present organisational challenges of their own. On Tibs News, Scott has created a weekly column called Domenica Bastardi (referencing an old banner that the Lazio ultras displayed ahead of the ‘Derby della Capitale’ back in 2013) where you can follow his exploits as he travels up and down the peninsula with the Lazio faithful.
The glory days
Rather than lingering on Sunday night’s defeat, I was keen to relive the glory days of the past and asked Scott what he thought was the greatest Lazio team of them all.
He mentioned the 1974 Scudetto winning team, full of great characters – many of them completely crazy and infamous for carrying guns! But, he was unequivicol about the greatest, and that was Sven-Göran Eriksson’s Scudetto winning team of 1999-2000.
With homegrown talent like Alessandro Nesta as the captain and stalwart at the back, and an talented midfield that included Pavel Nedved, Diego Simeone and Juan Sebastián Verón. Then there was Roberto Mancini and Marcelo Salas up front, as well of course, as Simone Inzaghi. It was a team full of super stars. They even beat Sir Alex Ferguson’s treble winning Manchester United team in the UEFA Super Cup that season. In the last 20 years there have been some good teams and some great players but sadly nothing like Sven’s team.
Where are all the Italians?
As a final sidebar (a topic that I’ll no doubt come back to in a future column), it is worth noting that there was just one Italian player in the Hellas starting eleven against Lazio on Monday night, goalkeeper Lorenzo Montipo.
In the second half Montipo conceded a fourth as Hellas slumped to a sobering 4-0 defeat.
For Scott Balaam, Argetinian Taty Castellanos was probably Lazio’s man of the match, with his best performance in a Lazio shirt.
For Verona a welcome break before they host Cremonese at the Bentegodi on 15 September. Unbeaten and buoyed by the imminent arrival of Jamie Vardy, a man who knows a thing or two about footballing miracles, it will be another stiff challenge for a team that already looks out of its depth in Serie A this season.
Richard Hough is the author of Verona Campione, the Miracle of 1985.