It said everything about the way Lazio’s season has been going that when the goal they had been chasing all evening finally arrived, it came not from a striker, not from a designated creator, but from a Montenegrin defender who has made his name at this club over years of relentless, unglamorous service and who decided, in the third minute of stoppage time at the Stadio Olimpico, that Monday night was the right moment to remind everyone he still had something left to give. Adam Maruśić has been at Lazio long enough to understand exactly what a goal of that kind means. He timed his run into the area from the right side, met Matteo Cancellieri’s cross at the near post before Arijanet Muric could get there, and nodded the ball into an empty net with the precision of someone who had planned it and the joy of someone who could barely believe it. Lazio 2-1 Sassuolo, their first Serie A win since January, and an end to a four-game winless run that had been threatening to become five for the first time since July 2020. The Stadio Olimpico, largely empty on a Monday night in early March, found whatever noise it could.
The evening had started in a manner so positive for Lazio that the goalless weeks which preceded it felt like they belonged to an entirely different club. Daniel Maldini scored in the second minute, which is the kind of thing that happens on Monday nights at the Olimpico roughly never, and the manner of his goal — pouncing on a loose ball inside the Sassuolo area after an early Lazio pressure move had broken down and produced a gift rather than a chance — was a perfect symbol of opportunism rewarded. Maldini had been without a Serie A goal for ten months, a drought that had stretched from May of last year through the winter and into this grey Monday in Rome with no apparent end in sight. Football occasionally resolves those situations in the most abrupt and unlikely way. A loose ball. A yard of space. A finish from close range that required very little technique and an enormous amount of being in exactly the right place at exactly the right second. The son of the great Paolo Maldini — named as a forward, deployed as a number ten, carrying a reputation built on craft and positioning rather than power — had his goal, and the Lazio end behind the goal celebrated it with the enthusiasm of a fan base that had been waiting for that moment across rather too many recent weeks.
Maurizio Sarri had selected his lineup carefully around an injury list that had stripped some of his more reliable options away in the preceding days. Ivan Provedel’s season-ending injury meant Edoardo Motta started in goal — his Lazio debut, which in the context of a must-win home match in a fight for European qualification was a situation that would have tested any young goalkeeper. Romagnoli and Gila formed the central defensive partnership. Nuno Tavares at left back — direct, physical, always looking to commit his opposite number — and Maruśić at right back, sitting deep and contributing his usual defensive diligence with the extra attacking run saved for moments when the score, and the game, demanded it. Cataldi, Taylor, and Dele-Bashiru occupied the midfield three — a combination that offered industry, pressing intensity, and enough technical quality to build from deep. Then Zaccagni, Maldini, and Isaksen across the front three, with Isaksen on the right carrying the responsibility for direct running that Sassuolo’s backline would need to monitor across the full 90 minutes.
Sassuolo came to Rome managed by Fabio Grosso and organised in their familiar 4-3-3 — Muric behind the established back four of Coulibaly, Jay Idzes, Muharemovic, and Garcia, with the midfield trio of Koné, Lipani, and Thorstvedt providing the engine, and then Berardi, Nzola, and Laurienté across the forward line. Laurienté, whose recent form across the previous four league games had produced two goals and four assists, was Sassuolo’s most dangerous attacking presence and a player that Lazio’s defensive line would need to respect every time he received the ball in positions he could face goal and drive. His quality is the kind that Serie A defenders know about and still struggle to contain once he finds rhythm, and Grosso had built his team’s evening largely around the expectation that the Algerian Frenchman would create chances even if the match started poorly.
The early goal forced Sassuolo to adjust those plans immediately, and the visitors responded with a period of possession-based football in the first quarter-hour that reflected their genuine quality without producing anything immediately dangerous. Lazio pressed well from the front — Maldini and Isaksen tracking back when the ball was played through Sassuolo’s midfield, Dele-Bashiru and Cataldi working hard to close the second line — and the home side’s defensive shape in those stages looked organised and compact. But the workload told. Cataldi had a shot saved in a moment of genuine quality from Muric, Isaksen made a near-post run off a Cataldi cross and found the header too difficult from close range, and Dele-Bashiru shot wide when a goal seemed possible. These were the moments Lazio needed to convert but didn’t, and the pattern of a long evening began to take shape quietly behind the immediate comfort of the lead.
The 27th minute brought one of those save-of-the-match contenders that decide whether a game finishes 1-0 or 1-1, and Monday night’s version came from Edoardo Motta making his debut. Nzola, who had made a brilliant run to the edge of the offside line and turned Gila in the process, fired a left-footed shot from an angle that produced a deflection off the Spanish defender and a sudden change of direction that would have beaten a more experienced goalkeeper nine times in ten. Motta stretched, got a touch, and watched the ball carry wide rather than across his line. It was the kind of save that you remember when the debutant’s career takes shape later, a moment where a young goalkeeper stood in a difficult position on a difficult night and produced the right response.
The equaliser, when it arrived, was not a matter of luck or deflection. Armand Laurienté collected a pass from Thorstvedt in the 35th minute at the edge of the Lazio area with enough space to take one touch, assess his options, and drive a right-footed shot into the top corner from around twelve metres out with a technique and placement that Motta had absolutely no chance of replicating his earlier intervention against. The ball went into the net with the kind of conviction that came from a player at the peak of his form. Laurienté wheeled away without excess celebration — the controlled reaction of a footballer who expected his shot to go exactly where it went. The Sassuolo players celebrated around him. The Stadio Olimpico fell quiet. Lazio were level, and the work of the evening had not even properly begun.
The final exchanges before halftime brought two pieces of genuine drama — a penalty appeal from Maldini inside the area that the referee waved away and VAR confirmed as the right call, and the loss of Cataldi through injury after the midfield anchor had picked up a knock and was replaced by Patric, who came on as a midfielder despite his natural position being central defence. The structural disruption was minor but noticeable — Lazio’s midfield pressing patterns became slightly less precise in the final ten minutes of the half, and the teams went in at halftime level with a strong sense that the second half was going to be won by whoever found the clinical touch their respective forward lines had been unable to supply in the first.
Two substitutions at the break — Provstgaard for Romagnoli for Lazio, Matic for Lipani for Sassuolo — changed the texture of the midfield slightly without changing the fundamental picture, and the opening stages of the second half were, as these things often are when both teams have just reorganised, slow and fragmented. Errors accumulated on both sides. The ball went out of play more than it found feet. The match had the feel of a fixture searching for its decisive moment rather than producing one organically.
Sarri introduced Cancellieri for Isaksen in the 79th minute and Zaccagni was replaced by Pedro shortly after, two substitutions that changed the attacking profile and gave Lazio fresh legs on the flanks for the final push. Grosso had brought on Walukiewicz for Coulibaly and Doig for Garcia at 68 minutes, refreshing the Sassuolo backline — and those substitutes were both involved in the sequence of yellow cards that followed, Walukiewicz booked after Laurienté had already collected one in the 86th minute for a foul committed in the frustration of a match that was slipping toward a draw the visitors would have taken. Sassuolo’s discipline in those closing stages frayed slightly at the edges as Lazio’s pressure built. The crowd, such as it was on a Monday night, found its voice again as the clock moved through the final minutes of normal time.
Cancellieri drove a low shot from distance in the 83rd minute that Muric tipped away. Motta then produced what may have been the save of his entire night — a double stop, first denying Thorstvedt and then reacting to get a hand on Doig’s follow-up from the rebound — with two minutes of normal time remaining. Those saves from the young goalkeeper, on his debut, kept a draw from becoming a defeat. Lazio were alive. And then Maruśić decided the evening was going to end differently.
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Cancellieri found the ball wide on the right side in the 90+2nd minute and delivered a cross into the Sassuolo area with enough height and weight to demand a decision from the goalkeeper. Muric came, decided to go for it, and did not reach it. Maruśić had timed his run from the right side of the six-yard box with the instinct of a player who has spent his entire career arriving in areas at the right moment even if goals rarely followed. He arrived first, nodded down and across into the far corner of the net, and was buried by his teammates before the Sassuolo players had finished protesting Muric’s decision to abandon his post. The goal stood. The Olimpico roared. Lazio had their three points from a night when they had created enough to win comfortably but spent 85 minutes making it look much harder than it needed to be.
The result moved Lazio to tenth place in Serie A — one point behind Sassuolo, who now sit ninth. The gap feels close in the context of a table where the European qualification positions in the upper half of the standings still pull distant, but every point in the lower reaches of the table is worth defending, and Monday’s win prevented Lazio from falling five points adrift of their mid-table rivals for at least another week. For Sarri, the relief in the post-match comments was palpable — a manager who has understood all season that the talent at his disposal deserved better results than the injury disruptions and clinical inefficiency in front of goal had allowed, and who could point on Monday to the performance level more than the scoreline as evidence of progress. Motta’s debut between the posts, given the circumstances, deserved full credit.
For Sassuolo, the defeat was only their second in the last seven league matches — a record that reflects the genuine quality Grosso has built across the second half of the season. Laurienté’s goal took his contributions in the last four league games to two goals and four assists, a return that makes him one of the better-performing wide forwards in Serie A at this specific moment regardless of how the rest of the campaign resolves. They were not beaten by a better team on Monday so much as beaten by a more desperate one, and by the right-back who happened to be standing in the perfect position when the cross arrived. The official Lega Serie A website carries the full updated standings and fixture list for anyone tracking the European qualification race in the Italian top flight as the final stretch begins.
The head-to-head record between Lazio and Sassuolo across all Serie A meetings since 2013 reads 13 wins for Lazio, six for Sassuolo, and five draws — a record that broadly reflects the historical gap between the two clubs in terms of resources and ambition, even if the current table has them separated by only a single point. Sassuolo had won the reverse fixture 1-0 earlier in the season and came within two minutes of completing a league double over Lazio that would have been only the second time in the entire history of their meetings that the Neroverdi had managed that particular feat. Maruśić denied them the history as much as he earned his own.
For complete coverage of every Serie A result, Italian football standings and upcoming fixtures across March and April as Lazio push for a top-half finish, make sure you follow live Italian football scores and match updates on fawanews.org.uk throughout the remainder of the 2025-26 season.
