Two days later and it still hurts…
It hurts because certain matches aren't just played: they're lived, they're breathed, they're worn like a second skin. And when you lose a final it's not just the bitterly painful result that stays inside you, it's the whole experience that surrounded it: the anticipation, the banter, the chatter, the flags and that stubborn conviction that – in spite of everything – we could even have won.
We Lazio fans are no strangers to disappointment. But every time is like the first. Because every time we truly believe it, and we show it in the streets around the stadium beforehand and in the stands afterwards.
The Lazio people fully answered the call from the leaders of the organised groups: everyone wear the home shirt of Lazio, from any season. The response was a beautiful biancoceleste tide made up of countless stories: shirts faded by time, others more modern, sponsors that no longer exist, numbers that hark back to different eras and to timeless heroes.
All with the same weight on them.
It was like watching our history walk down the street. Di Padre in Figlio, literally. Very young fans in the Scudetto shirt of 2000 next to men in those eternal ones from the 80s. Recent idols and names that are still legends today.
We sang until we lost our voices, we painted the stands as only the Lazio faithful can, and for a moment it felt possible. Then football… which decided otherwise, that fine thread that separates glory from rage. And we remained on the other side.
Lazio isn't a fashion, isn't a moment, isn't a team to follow when it's going well and forget when it's going badly.
Lazio and Lazialità are an inheritance. Something that is passed down to us without us even noticing and which then never leaves us.
Di Padre in Figlio isn't a slogan. It's what we are!
Those who don't live this faith cannot understand that it doesn't end there. While others celebrate, we are already projecting ourselves forward towards the horizon that today matters most of all: the Derby!
Against roma it's never a match like the others. Not after a victory, let alone after a lost final.
Everything is measured there: character, pride and belonging.
On Sunday fine words will be no use. We'll need ferocity and we'll need memory. We'll need to remember today's bitterness and transform it into something fierce, alive, ours, Lazio!
A derby's ending is capable of changing the taste of an entire season. It can raise a whole Curva back to its feet and give meaning again to all the kilometres devoured, the sleepless nights, the money spent and that faith that never goes out.
On Sunday, once again, we won't be there and this, once again, will weigh heavily. But it doesn't mean absence.
Against the rivals from the other bank of the Tevere, nothing needs explaining. It's a match that is played even without the stadium, even without the Curva. Because certain things we feel inside us, not around us!
It will mean being there in another way, with the anger of the lost final and with the pride of those who don't bend, with that tide of biancocelesti shirts from every era that reminds us who we really are.
It will mean being there, without flags in the stands but with Lazio sewn onto our skin!
