The Two Ciro Immobiles

The spearhead of Italy’s attack is either its secret weapon or its fatal flaw. At age 31, it is still not clear which.

The raw facts are, on the surface, overwhelming. In the last five seasons, Ciro Immobile has scored 26 goals, then 41 goals, followed by 19, 39 and 25. Over the course of that run, he has won the Golden Boot — the prize given annually to Europe’s most prolific goal-scorer — once, and tied the record for the most goals scored in a single season in Italy’s top league, Serie A. The context of those facts only serves to embellish them. Immobile does not play for an all-conquering superpower, the sort of team that carves out a dozen chances a game and regularly dispatches overmatched opponents by four- and five-goal margins. He plays, instead, for Lazio, a side constructed — by superclub standards — on a shoestring. And he operates in Serie A, a league which no less an authority than Cristiano Ronaldo regards as the most difficult in the world in which to score goals. A league in which Ashley Cole, among the greatest defenders of his era, was regarded as being surprisingly naïve, tactically.