June 09, (THEWILL)- The changing face of the managerial slate in Europe continued on Wednesday with the confirmation of the appointment of Italian football manager Maurizio Sarri as the head coach of Lazio on a two-year deal in Serie A.
Sarri will be replacing former Lazio manager Simone Inzaghi, who left them to join new Serie A champions Inter Milan after title-winning manager Antonio Conte parted ways with the Milan side.
The appointment marks the return of the 62-year-old to the Italian top division after being fired by former champions Juventus at the end of last season. He will be joined by his assistant Giovanni Martusciello along with Marco Ianni, Andrea Pertugio and Massimo Nenci, who will compose his cast of backroom staff.
Sarri continues to command a high reputation in his country and his period at Napoli is still considered the zenith of his long managerial career. The fact that that Napoli era continues to be a benchmark against which the style of play of all teams is judged in Italy, says a lot about the former Chelsea manager.
Since then, however, the Italian has lengthened the trophy list he boasts of to include a Europa League title, which he won while with Chelsea, and then the Scudetto with Juventus. The disappointing end of Andrea Pirlo’s similarly single term in the recently concluded season makes his time at Turin an achievement on its own.
Although the speculations were rife about Lazio’s consideration of Sarri for the top job, it comes as a bit of a surprise that Sarri’s new job is not with a bonafide title contender and that Lazio were able to convince him to accept. A gig at Inter could have been more his standard.
However, the Lazio job came up when Inter tempted Simone Inzaghi away from the capital as Antonio Conte’s successor with the conception being that Inzaghi’s system was adjudged more compatible with Inter’s current squad than Sarri’s own very specific philosophy of the Napoli era.
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Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
