Last November, before Lazio's Serie A match against Juve, club president Claudio gave Immobile a stylish shirt to commemorate his all-time top scorer against Roma. To commemorate his historic achievements, the back of the special edition jersey is printed with the figure 160, and the words "King" are printed on the bottom.
During the speech, Immobile struggled to control his emotions, but when he returned to the dressing room, he saw a huge banner with his head on it and the other that read "Welcome to History." Tears began to well up in his eyes, and the reason for that was easy to understand: attaining legendary status was no easy feat.
Just a few months ago, Inmobile was suffering from self-doubt. At the beginning of the season, he was in good shape, scoring 6 goals in the first 5 games in Serie A, but he still felt that he was not a good fit for Sarri's style of play. Lazio's performance was not good at the time, and Mobile asked the new coach: "Am I a problem with the team?" Sarri said no and assured him he would adapt his tactics to Immobile's strengths.
As he told italian media last month, "It's a team with a center that scores 30 goals in a single season, so we have to build the team around his characteristics and there's no point in running away." This approach is paying off, with Lazio scoring 17 points in their last eight games and rising from 8th to 5th in their Serie A standings ahead of this weekend's derby with 6th-placed Roma. Lazio's rise is built on solid backlines, but Inmobile is still scoring goals.
In fact, his penalty win against Venice on Monday night also made Ainmobile the top scorer in Lazio's Serie A history, a point ahead of previous record holder Piola. Perhaps more interestingly, since joining Lazio from Borussia Dortmund in 2016, he has scored 144 league goals, as many as Cristiano Ronaldo, while in the last 6 years only Levan and Messi have scored more goals in Europe's top 5 leagues.
It is worth pointing out that his shot conversion rate is 20%, which is higher than Messi's 17.05% and C Ronaldo's 14.68%, and his conversion chances of 52.04% are even higher than Levan's 47.68%. However, in the debate about the best striker in the modern era, Inmobile's name was never mentioned. Of course, this is due in part to his poor performance in international competitions: 54 appearances for the Italian national team, scoring 15 goals.
In the group stage of Euro 2020 Italy, Inmobile scored two goals, and despite having the advantage in the last two games of the group stage against Switzerland and Northern Ireland, Italy has drawn consecutively and now has to enter Portugal's play-offs to enter Qatar. Thus, Inmobile bore the brunt of criticism, which he frankly admitted upset him. In fact, Lazio fans worship Inmobile, and Roma fans respect him.
His achievements in Lazio are certainly worthy of respect, and although he did not play for one of the strongest teams in Serie A, he has won the top scorer award twice and even the European Golden Boot after equaling the single-season Serie A scoring record set by Higuain in 2020, and his primary goal now is to ensure that he becomes "Italy's starting striker at the World Cup".
In the upcoming World Cup play-offs, if the Blues have to rely on the 32-year-old to beat North Macedonia, Portugal or Turkey, they may not even be able to enter Qatar. He has been eliminated countless times in his career, but he can still score and tonight's derby gives him another fantastic opportunity to prove he can be Italy's savior, the biggest contributor to the defeat of Mourinho.