Lazio forward Mattia Zaccagni scored in the biancocelesti's 6-0 pre-season friendly victory over Serie D side Flaminia Civita Castellana at Formello on July 27, contributing to a six-goal spread that saw different players find the net across both halves under new head coach Gennaro Gattuso.
The scoreline is not the story. Six goals against fourth-tier opposition in a second pre-season outing tells you almost nothing about competitive readiness. What the result does confirm is that Zaccagni remains part of Gattuso's plans — a detail worth noting given the structural upheaval that has reshaped Lazio across the summer. The 31-year-old is no longer operating under Maurizio Sarri, the coach whose system defined much of his recent career at the club, and the transition carries genuine implications for how Zaccagni's qualities are deployed.
Gattuso himself acknowledged after the match that the squad is not yet complete, stating that the club still needs additions to finish building the roster. That candour matters for Zaccagni's context. A forward who finished the 2025-26 Serie A season with three goals and zero assists across 26 appearances — carrying an average rating of 7.00 — enters this pre-season in a position that is neither unassailable nor under obvious threat. The numbers from last term were modest in volume but not damning in quality. The rating holds. The output does not.
Lazio finished ninth in Serie A with 51 points from 37 matches, a record of 13 wins, 12 draws, and 12 defeats, with 39 goals scored and 39 conceded. That symmetry — a team that neither dominated nor collapsed, that gave back exactly what it took — is the tactical problem Gattuso has inherited. Zaccagni, as one of the senior attacking figures, sits at the centre of that question.
The club's AI assessment rates Zaccagni at 75 out of 100 overall, with a potential ceiling of 72 — a profile that suggests a player at or slightly past his peak, whose value now lies in consistency and positional intelligence rather than upward trajectory. At 31, that is not a criticism. It is a job description. Gattuso's task is to build a system that extracts the best of what Zaccagni currently is, rather than waiting for a version of him that is not coming.
The Flaminia friendly, thin as it is in competitive meaning, at least confirms Zaccagni is fit, involved, and scoring. With the squad still incomplete by Gattuso's own account, the forward's role in the opening weeks of the Serie A season may depend as much on who arrives alongside him as on anything he does in pre-season.
Gattuso needs goals from his attack. Zaccagni needs a system that creates the conditions for them. Whether those two requirements align is the central question of Lazio's summer.