Lazio welcome Udinese to Rome on Monday evening with the mood around the club lifted by a bruising but successful Cup run and the chance to keep pressure on the sides above them in Serie A. Just four days after reaching the Coppa Italia final, Lazio are back in league play against an opponent that has already made life awkward for them this season.
Wednesday night brought the kind of cup tie that leaves nothing intact. Alessio Romagnoli’s late strike looked set to complete a 3-2 aggregate win in Bergamo, but Lazio still had to survive a penalty shootout littered with misses before reserve goalkeeper Edoardo Motta made four saves to send them through. The reward is a final against Inter Milan next month, and a brief return to the league table before that trip to a showcase occasion.
For Lazio, the timing matters because the club is still ninth and cannot afford to let its European hopes drift while the calendar tightens. They beat Napoli at Stadio Maradona last week to end Napoli’s long top-flight unbeaten streak, and they have won four of their last six league matches. That has steadied the season, but it has not erased the gap between chasing and actually qualifying.
Udinese arrive with their own case to make. They are four points behind Lazio in mid-table and have spent the spring showing a stubborn edge, beating Fiorentina 3-0 and AC Milan 3-0 since the start of March, then drawing with Atalanta and Como while conceding just one goal across their last four matches. Their last outing was less convincing, a 1-0 home loss to Parma, but they have a habit of making this fixture uncomfortable. A late Keinan Davis strike earned them a point in the reverse meeting at the tail end of last year, and they are unbeaten in five straight away games against Lazio.
The pressure on Lazio is sharpened by absences. Mario Gila will miss the match after limping out of Wednesday’s cup clash with an ankle injury, while Danilo Cataldi, Mattia Zaccagni, Ivan Provedel and Alessio Furlanetto are also sidelined. Oliver Provstgaard should partner Romagnoli at the back, and Adam Marusic remains a doubt. That leaves Lazio with a thinner margin for error at a moment when the club is trying to balance a Cup final and a league campaign that still threatens to slip away.
Udinese, meanwhile, are chasing a top-half finish and the chance to post three consecutive Serie A away wins for the first time since 2022. They have shown enough in recent weeks to make that target realistic, even if Roma offers a harder test than the numbers alone suggest. Lazio’s Cup celebration is fresh, but Monday night is a different kind of exam: one that will show whether the semifinal lift can carry over before the final against Inter Milan arrives.
