Silly question, but how do you confess a night out to your manager? Gennaro Gattuso, who has coached Lazio since the summer, told a press conference, according to Football Italia: “I prefer intellectual honesty. If someone tells me they had one drink too many or had a night out, fine, but I won’t allow anyone to ruin a training session. My office door is always open.”
I opened a tab in my notebook, orange: “confessions”. I had three questions. Do you knock? Do you give the exact time? And what happens after the confession, since it’s “fine”?
I checked, and actually nobody knows. There is no form. The open door is the whole system. In basketball, I had a coach who wanted a text before midnight, and at least we knew when it stopped.
What intrigues me is that the rule has two parts. At night, you can. In the morning, the session is untouchable. So the line sits somewhere between the last drink and the first drill. I asked Freddy where exactly.
In my dressing room, the limit is the moment he finds his boots in the car boot.
That isn’t a time, I noted it down anyway.
Before Parma, Gattuso also said: “If we drop off, Parma will give us a hiding to remember.” Lazio have just won 3-0 at Juventus, though, and share the Serie A lead with Inter. I’m told managers are always afraid of the next match, fine, but what does that mean? Anyway, I still have a lot to learn.
It’s true, we checked: Football Italia.
