Underrated Lautaro Is Serie A’s Best
When Lautaro Martínez signed for Internazionale in the summer of 2018, he arrived with a lot of promise. Supposed to be the next big thing coming from Argentina, Inter hoped that Lautaro would be the next Argentinean striker to dominate Serie A the same way the likes of Gabriel Batistuta, Hernán Crespo, Carlos Tevez, and Mauro Icardi did.
Lautaro’s first season was, by all accounts, a positive if unspectacular one. The only stumbling block between him and a guaranteed starting place was his close friend Icardi. As the team’s captain and main striker in Luciano Spalletti’s preferred 4-2-3-1, Icardi was a nailed on starter, and that understandably limited Lautaro’s minutes in his maiden Serie A season.
After deciding to sell Icardi in the summer of 2019, Inter went all in for newly hired and highly demanding coach Antonio Conte’s preferred target — Romelu Lukaku. Conte had always used a two striker system, so Lukaku’s signing was not supposed to have a negative impact on Lautaro’s playing time. And indeed it didn’t. But if Inter had a talisman, a star, a player to symbolize the team, it was Lukaku and not Lautaro. They formed a strong partnership, and over two seasons managed to reach the Europa League final and win lo scudetto. Lautaro contributed 17 goals to Inter’s scudetto cause, but it was Lukaku and Conte who received most of the plaudits.
What unfolded next was interesting. Each summer, Inter have had to sacrifice important pieces of their squad due to financial reasons, which started with Lukaku and Achraf Hakimi’s departures in summer 2021. That strategy led Conte to leave as well. How did Lautaro respond? He kicked on to lead the team and score 21 league goals; 25 overall in 2021/2022. If there had been one early criticism of Lautaro, it was his knack for missing easy chances. But he has worked constantly hard to cancel that out from his game.
Then Inter re-signed his partner in crime Lukaku on loan, to attempt to bring back the good times after missing out on lo scudetto to city rivals AC Milan. But it quickly became clear that the hierarchy had changed. Lautaro had become the main man. Not just for his longevity at the club, but for his consistent overall improvement. He again finished the season as Inter’s top scorer with 21 Serie A goals, and 28 in all competitions, to keep up his steadily evolving numbers in front of goal.
This summer brought familiar drama to Inter, with the saga around Lukaku signing permanently for Inter (him and Lautaro also apparently fell out after Lukaku ignored the former’s phone calls), and the further sacrifices of key players André Onana and Marcelo Brozović, but that didn’t deter Lautaro. He became the team’s permanent captain after Samir Handanović’s contract was not renewed and has already scored 10 goals this season, before we had even reached October.
Goals have never been Lautaro’s defining trait, unlike his previous teammate Icardi, or goal poachers from eras past. In fact, Lautaro has always excelled as a team player, in terms of link up, dribbling, back to goal play and work rate. Add to that, his consistency and balanced temperament — he’s no prima donna, hardly ever misses matches, and always handles himself as a top professional. In short, he’s highly dependable and the way he honed his finishing skills to become a predator in front of goal means that he has become the most important player in the league’s strongest team.
Now, when you add him stepping up in big matches, like his wonder goal vs Liverpool in March 2022 or his overall performance against Barcelona at Camp Nou in October of the same year, or his madness in the Euroderby last season, you get a player at the top of his game. The fact that he was the one who scored for Inter versus Real Sociedad in the Champions League to salvage a point at the death was another indicator of his increasing influence, but it was dwarfed by his four goal haul off the bench against Salernitana to become the first ever Serie A player to do so and give Inter the full points in the process.
There is a constant feeling that Lautaro does not get his due credit in the media or within the mainstream football circles. Perhaps, he was previously out-shown by Lukaku, and his underwhelming World Cup 2022 certainly did not help his cause. But, make no mistake, right now Lautaro has matured into a lethal all round forward, and has a strong case to be Serie A’s finest. It would be no surprise if he finishes as this season’s Capocannoniere.