He clings to Vecino, Tudor’s Lazio, to try to chase a qualification for the Champions League which would be incredible and which the Uruguayan has already shown he knows how to achieve. An objective which today, if achieved, would represent a sort of sporting miracle, to be achieved by trying to do the best and at the same time hoping for external help. A complicated possibility at the moment, almost impossible. But if there is still a glimmer of light on the horizon, much of the credit goes to Matias, who has made an enormous contribution with his goals and allowed the Biancoceleste team to remain in the running in one way or another.
Vecino, the previous one
After all, this is certainly nothing new for him. It was May 20, 2018 and that day, the last round of the championship, Simone Inzaghi’s Lazio were defeated in Rome by Inter, who in a comeback grabbed them in fourth place and overtook them due to direct clashes, thus earning the last valid place for Champions League qualification. A mocking, heavy, traumatic knockoutor. With those catchphrases «Vecino takes it», «the garra charrua» or «it’s the man from the Champions League» who twists and turns the knife in the wound. Yes, because the decisive goal in that sort of playoff had belonged to the Uruguayan midfielder himself, with a header in the final minutes that had frozen the Olimpico. Now Matias finds himself on the other side of the fence (as well as Simone Inzaghi and Stefan De Vrij, author of the penalty foul which allowed Icardi to score the provisional 2-2), but with the same objective and the possibility in a certain sense of “redeeming” himself after that disappointment inflicted on the fans Lazio.
Like a bomber jacket for Lazio
He will be able to try this Sunday, almost exactly six years after that match, as an extra man in the team Igor Tudoras well as the club’s second best scorer of the season (with his 7 overall seals, of which 6 in Serie A) behind only Ciro Immobile. Numbers that make this year the most prolific of his career (at most he reached 5 in 2018-19 with Inter) and which make him Lazio’s striker since the Croatian arrived on the bench, with 3 goals in the last 5 of championship, the last two of which were consecutive and starting from the bench. Today he scored 4 when entering the match in progress (against Atalanta, Udinese, Monza and Empoli), a “skill” discovered more than anything else in this tournament, given that previously against Lazio he had only scored in the matches in which he had been deployed from the start, including the one against Salernitana in which he left his first signature with Tudor on the bench.
