Wasteful Lazio clinch progression over Dynamo Kiev

Date: 15th March 2018 at 8:53pm
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A largely frustrating night for Lazio ended in celebration, despite the Biancocelesti missing chance upon chance in their second leg Europa League victory at Dynamo Kiev.

The Roman side were completely dominant from start to finish, but Ciro Immobile and co. lacked a clinical touch in front of goal and will be relieved that their profligacy did not come back to bite them.

Unsurprisingly, Immobile had the game’s first chance within ten minutes. As he latched onto the end of a through ball he rounded the goalkeeper and looked set to open the scoring, but for Tamas Kadar’s flying block.

Midway through the first half the Serie A side took a deserved aggregate lead through surprise scorer Lucas Leiva after bossing the opening exchanges. The Brazilian found himself on the run and completely unmarked in the box from a Luis Alberto corner and made no mistake from inside the six-yard box.

Dynamo themselves had a chance but failed to hit the target, before Luis Alberto came close to giving Lazio a comfortable cushion in unusual circumstances. Again standing over a corner, he opted against picking out a teammate in the area and instead looked to score himself, almost humiliating Denys Boyko, who just about turned clear from under his crossbar to save his own blushes.

Immobile uncharacteristically missed a golden opportunity to make it two. Felipe Anderson found him in space in front of goal but a complete mishit went wide. The former Torino forward was again thwarted twice more by Boyko before the break, with the second of those denials proving controversial as the goalkeeper’s hands were outside the are when they made contact with the ball.

Five minutes after the break the visitors missed another huge chance to kill off the tie. Lucas played a ball into the six-yard box that was half-cleared but only into the path of Patric who ran onto the ball eight yards from goal and, unchallenged, blazed over.

Immobile again missed as clear a chance as he could have asked for, but replays showed that he was offside when the ball was played to him, before Luis Alberto came close to finding the top corner with a free-kick before moments later.

It was not Immobile’s night, and that showed once more as he took a complete air-shot after Felipe Anderson found him free in the box with an excellent chipped pass.

Greed got the better of Felipe Anderson with 20 minutes to play as he drove into the box and instead of squaring it to Immobile in the centre, he shot himself and saw his effort saved.

As the final whistle approached, Lazio breathed a sigh of relief as Stefan de Vrij prodded home their second from another corner. Luis Alberto found Luis Felipe at the near post, whose downward header fell right into the Dutchman’s path, allowing him to poke in from three yards.

 

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