Lazio's Swedish coach Sven Eriksson is not the sort of guy to fly off at the handle. Despite having worked in Italian soccer for 12 seasons, not to mention another five with Benfica in Portugal, Eriksson remains a quintessential Scandinavian. He is affable, polite, easy to deal with and, to the delight of the various foreign TV crews visiting Lazio in recent days, he speaks excellent English.
However, even the affable Eriksson has his raw nerve. These days, that nerve is called AS Roma, Lazio's loathed crosstown rivals who two weeks ago inflicted a merciless 4-1 drubbing on Lazio in what has been their only defeat in 22 Serie A, Champions League and Italian Cup games so far this season.
As Eriksson prepares his team to meet Chelsea in a Champions League second phase game at the Olympic Stadium in Rome tonight, the spectre of that derby defeat hangs awkwardly in the air. Last Friday, Eriksson conceded his impatience with the clamour provoked by the derby defeat: "Ah, forget the derby . . . That's just one game. This team wants to win either the Champions League or the Italian title . . . or both".
Inevitably the fans see things differently. Derbies are very special games, governed by a logic that has little to do with the rest of a side's competitive calendar. These days, the Rome derby is just about the hottest game in Italian soccer. To lose it 4-1 and to do so in a game in which you concede four goals in the first half hour is to set yourself up for a thorough fan and media drubbing.
Sven Eriksson would like the Lazio fans and media to just accept that the derby represented nothing more and nothing less than "half an hour when everything went wrong". More importantly, he would like the fans and media to admit that that particular "half hour" represented just about the only serious error committed by Lazio this season.
Eriksson has his point. Since that derby defeat, Lazio have played four times - opening their Champions League, second phase in satisfactory manner by winning 2-0 away to Olympique Marseilles; drawing 0-0 with Juventus in the league; beating Perugia 2-0 on Saturday; and drawing 1-1 in a third round, first leg Italian Cup tie with second division Ravenna.
That "half hour of folly" would seem to be behind Lazio. Yet, in his heart of hearts, Eriksson knows that Lazio have to deliver a convincing performance tonight to completely wipe out the derby trauma. On paper, Lazio's four post-derby games look like good results. In reality, Lazio started off very shakily against Marseilles only coming out to play and win the game when they realised, to their amazement, that Marseilles were in even worse condition.
After that 0-0 draw with Juventus last week, Eriksson made the very revealing and very untypical observation that this was an occasion when it had been "more important not to lose, than to win". Admittedly, Lazio did look like something close to their habitual selves in their 2-0 away win against Perugia on Saturday, taking the game to the opposition and playing attacking soccer from the kick-off with Alen Boksic on the left, Sergio Conceicao on the right wing and Marcelo Salas at centre-forward proving simply uncontainable. It will come as a huge surprise if all three do not lead the Lazio attack against Chelsea tonight.
