Luis Alberto looked back at his time with Lazio so far and predicted where the team will end up under coach Maurizio Sarri.
Speaking in an interview with Italian magazine Rivista Undici (via La Lazio Siamo Noi) yesterday, the 28-year-old Spanish midfielder first spoke about how tight-knit the Biancocelesti squad is.
A family. Here in the locker room it’s easy to form a group, even a teammate who just arrived told us so.
It’s impossible not to settle in, and then here there are the same players as when I arrived. With Immobile, Milinkovic-Savic, Radu, we are always together.
He spoke about the differences between coaches Simone Inzaghi and Maurizio Sarri.
Inzaghi was a friend, a father for all of us. Sarri instead has a different personality, stronger. He has a beautiful game idea, we saw it in Napoli or Empoli.
In my opinion in two or three months Lazio will have a lot of fun. I don’t know if we’ll win something, but we’ll certainly have fun.
And for the opponents it will be very complicated, our quality is very similar to that of his Napoli. In fact, in some aspects I can say that we are even better.
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The Lazio midfielder touched on the team’s goals this campaign under the 62-year-old Italian coach.
For now our goal is fourth place, we need to get as many points as possible, but we also know that we are a team under construction.
We need to understand what the coach is asking us to do, only then will we be able to do great things.
Luis Alberto discussed the tactical changes that coach Sarri has brought in this campaign.
There are sixty, seventy more meters of pitch to get to the goal. But the advantage is that, when you get past the pressure, you have a highway in front of you.
The way we play, then, it’s a task I can do, with Milinkovic-Savic being able to play further forward to use his physicality.
The 28-year-old Spanish midfielder was happy to be called the ‘assist man’ in the Lazio squad.
It’s something that has always belonged to me, I love helping my teammates score.
Sometimes in order to make a pass I realize I miss the opportunity to shoot from a favourable position.
He touched on his relationship with star striker Ciro Immobile.
I’m still waiting for my Rolex! It has to be said that for the whole ninety minutes he does an enormous job of breaking through the opponent’s line.
So it’s easier to serve him chances.
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Luis Alberto recounted his difficult start to life at Lazio following his arrival in the summer of 2016.
After all this time it’s easier, I’m more serene on the field, I feel the trust I have around me, on the pitch, in training, in the locker room.
I arrived on the last day of the market, in a season without European cups, Inzaghi always used the same eleven players. And then, in the 4-3-3, I don’t think even he knew where to put me.
So the first three-four months were devastating, it was the most complicated moment of my career. I had lost my mind, I didn’t even want to go to training anymore.
Stuff that had never happened to me. With my mental coach Campillo everything changed. Even if I didn’t play, all my teammates and staff said I was the best player in training.
He then revealed when the turning point came under Inzaghi.
At the end of the year I went to the coach and said, ‘ok, let’s find a solution, I’m leaving’. For me it was a sh*t year. And instead Inzaghi told me, no, you’re not going anywhere.
He started to play me as a regista after Biglia’s departure, for me it was great, I took the ball and there was no pressure.
I went in a few months from leaving to playing almost two hundred games with Lazio. Football is like that, in one day everything can change, for better or for worse.
The Lazio midfielder gave his thoughts on Serie A and Italian football in general.
I watch everything. Last year I really liked Italiano and De Zerbi, they are two coaches who will do well.
There is a lot of quality in this league, otherwise Italy would not have won the European Championship.
What bothers me in this championship is that there are too many pitches that are not up to par, it gets complicated that way.
Papu Gomez, who is now in Seville, told me that there the ball travels at two thousand kilometres an hour.
In Italy, on the other hand, this is impossible, because before it reaches your teammate it always makes two or three bobbles. This is an aspect that Serie A must regulate as soon as possible.
Finally, Luis Alberto remembered his disappointing spell in the Premier League with Liverpool.
When a team like that calls you, you can’t say no. In a short time I had gone from the Spanish B league to a team that could win the Premier League, with players like Gerrard, Suarez or Sturridge.
I had moved on to a completely different kind of football, I understood that in addition to the technical quality I would have had to raise the level of many other things.
Of course, it is true, it would have certainly gone differently if they had called me at another time, but some people throw away fifteen years of their career, after all, I only threw away a couple of years.
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