Today we’re wishing a happy 44th birthday to Lazio boss and Champions League history-maker Simone Inzaghi!
Like his brother Filippo, Simone was born in Piacenza, was also a striker and similarly began his career with his boyhood club.
His breakthrough came in 1999, when he secured a move to Lazio on the back of having scored 15 Serie A goals for Piacenza the previous season.
He made an instant impact, helping the Aquile win a domestic double of the Scudetto and Coppa Italia in 99-00.
Today we’re wishing a happy 44th birthday to Lazio boss and Champions League history-maker Simone Inzaghi!
Like his brother Filippo, Simone was born in Piacenza, was also a striker and similarly began his career with his boyhood club.
His breakthrough came in 1999, when he secured a move to Lazio on the back of having scored 15 Serie A goals for Piacenza the previous season.
He made an instant impact, helping the Aquile win a domestic double of the Scudetto and Coppa Italia in 99-00.
However, his best individual achievement came in the Champions League that season as he equalled Marco van Basten’s then-record of nine Champions League goals in a single campaign.
Included in that was a four-goal haul in one game against Olympique Marseille. He remains only one of 14 players to have ever scored four or more in one Champions League match.
Inzaghi’s later career dried up, despite winning three Italy caps, with forgettable loan spells at Sampdoria and Atalanta having followed.
He retired in 2008 and immediately ventured into coaching, first with the Aquile’s youth sides, before taking caretaker charge of the first team in 2016.
Marcelo Bielsa replaced him as Lazio’s permanent boss that summer, but the Argentine lasted less than a week in the hotseat and so Inzaghi was brought back.
Neither the coach nor the capital club have looked back, winning two Supercoppa and a Coppa Italia together in the four years that have passed.
This season, Simone has guided Lazio to second place in Serie A and just a point behind league leaders Juventus, on the 20th anniversary of the club winning their last Scudetto.