Lazio striker in the form of his life at 30
Ciro Immobile
W
hen he was
officially
presented
as a Lazio
player in
2016, Ciro
Immobile
was asked how he thought he compared
with previous strikers at the club.
Modestly, he said he had seen footage
of players such as Beppe Signori and
Bruno Giordano but, for the time being,
he would not like to draw comparisons
with them, adding: “Maybe if you ask me
the same question in two or three years
time I might give you an answer.”
Well, four years have now gone by and
the comparisons are hard to avoid. With
27 goals by March for league leadersHeadliners
Lazio, the 30-year-old is not only the
leading marksman in Serie A this season
he also ranks at number four in Lazio’s
all-time scoring chart behind Silvio Piola,
Signori and Giorgio Chinaglia.
Further afield he also leads the ESM
Golden Shoe standings, ahead of Robert
Lewandowski, Erling Haaland, Cristiano
Ronaldo and Timo Werner (see page 75).
The point about Immobile’s reticence
on that first afternoon is that it was a
reflection on the two disappointing years
that had gone before, first with Borussia
Dortmund and then Sevilla.
In 2014, having just topped the Serie
A scoring chart with 22 goals for Torino,
he joined a Dortmund side coached by
Jurgen Klopp. The German experience,
however, did not work out. By the end ofa season in which he saw too much time
on the bench, he had scored 10 goals,
with just three of those coming in the
Bundesliga. He left with the conclusion
that German was “damn hard to learn”
and headed to Spain.
To some extent things were even
worse at Sevilla, where he scored just
four times, and by January 2016 he was
back at Torino, where he rediscovered his
touch and found the net 14 times before
the end of the season.
That earned him a €9.5million move
to Lazio in the summer. One hundred and
sixteen goals in the following three-and-
a-half seasons and Lazio would now
probably put a €70m price tag on him.
To put it mildly, the Lazio experience
has put Immobile’s faltering career backSharp finish...beating
Internazionale keeper
Daniele Padelli