LAZIO MUST SAVE ITALIAN FOOTBALL WITH A WIN TO UCL GROUP STAGE

SS Lazio was the team to play last season in the Italian Serie A. The team boast of great talent and with the team fighting to make the Uefa Champions league in as many years shows the transformation and the difficulty the team has gone through in getting back to their old days.

Italian football has been reduced to fourth place in World and European football and with Lazio placing third and making the playoff against Bayer04 Leverkusen they should put in more efforts to save Italian football. The Champions league has not seen Italian teams make the semi-finals in five consecutive seasons after the exploits of Internazionale Milano under the tutelage of Jose Mourinho in 2010.

Antonio Candreva has been by far underrated by pundits of world football because he plies his trade in the Serie A which has gone down in recent years. But the level of pace and contributions Candreva adds to the game would be fancied by any manager who wants an all round player who does everything to track back and support the defence. With the likes of Filipe Anderson, Marco Parolo and captain Stephan Mauri still holding the sea blue and white stripes together, Lazio must ensure that the playoff game against Leverkusen would be the first step towards reinstating them back into the European game.

Italian football must rise and with Lazio playing a game that would see Italian teams have three teams in the group stage with the clause "if they win" should be taken seriously. The Spanish La Liga would see five competitive teams play this season and with the powerhouse of world football being FC Barcelona and Real Madrid winning the last two editions, La Liga would be favourites to win but Italians must have the numbers to be able to compete. If Lazio should lose and get eliminated from the UCL it means that Italian Football would see only two of its teams being Roma and Juventus in the Champions league.

This is a pleading call to all the management setups that make the core group of Lazio and lovers of Italian football to support them in making the group stages because they face a great hurdle and an uphill task against a very good Bayer04 Leverkusen side which opened their Bundesliga season with a win.