Rome 28 March 2024 – One of the great unknowns of the Lazio season is undoubtedly the ephemeral and inconsistent talent of Daichi Kamada. The most discordant note of the Roman summer transfer market, the signing of the Japanese player, was supposed to give further dynamism and brilliance to the Biancoceleste midfield. The chiaroscuro start must have shown his talent, but without ever finding the right continuity, the ex Eintracht Frankfurt he was relegated to the bottom of the rotations, with increasingly less playing time until he became the biggest question mark in the league’s championship Lazio.
Where we must look for the culprit of the failure, up to now, of the experience of Kamada in white and blue? The out-of-role deployment certainly didn’t help his inclusion. The Japanese is a midfielder with markedly offensive skills. Very good at leading the transition in attack, his ideas made the fortunes of the German team in which he played, making him a constant danger with his flashes and plays. It is no coincidence that in his last year in Germany he finished with 16 goals and 7 assists in 47 games played in all competitions. Right-footed, one of the Japanese’s main plays was to attack from the centre-left, then converge towards the center of the pitch and then attempt the winning shot or pass. All qualities that, the placement of Sarri as a left midfielder, he took second place in favor of a more attentive performance in the defensive phase.
There Lazio Of Sarri had in fact in Luis Alberto a player with similar characteristics and already before the arrival of Kamada it was precisely Spanish that followed what Japanese did in Germany. This created a formation that was too unbalanced forward, which forced the coach to opt for Guendouzi in place of the Japanese to provide greater quantity, given the superior physicality of the transalpine. The characteristics of the Frenchman are in fact more similar to those of the starter Milinkovic-Savic, a man to be replaced, and allowed the Biancoceleste team to regain their lost balance. All this pushed Kamada increasingly out of the rotations, in favor not only of the former Marseille, but also of Vecino. To all this must also be added the important language barrier that separated the coach from his player. Sarri he has never made a secret of his preference for Italian players also for reasons of communication and the Japanese’s obvious difficulties in learning Italian have gradually made his lack of coordination with his teammates more and more evident.
Now with a coach like Tudor but his star can shine again. The formation with two attacking midfielders, instead of a pure trident with wingers, could give him several minutes on the pitch in his preferred field position. The Croatian coach is in fact testing the qualities of his playmakers in the new formation in training and the Japanese is testing both forward and in midfield. Two roles that he also covered with the shirt of Japanthe one who didn’t dress during the last one Asian Cup and which he will certainly want to find again as soon as possible. There is a slice of the future at stake: the Japanese player’s contract expires this June, with an option to renew for three years with the Biancocelesti. If the player from the Land of the Rising Sun wants to reconfirm, the next two months will be fundamental, otherwise at the end of the season it will be goodbye between the Biancoceleste Eagle and the boy born in Iyo.
