Italian Club Thrown into CHAOS as Mass Exodus Sees Manager Come Under Fire

“I Have No Problem With the Players”: Is Sarri Really the Issue at Lazio?

For those of you who keep up to date with the latest comings, goings, and dramas in the Italian Serie A, you’ll know that the situation at Lazio has become increasingly chaotic.

Manager Maurizio Sarri and club owner Claudio Lotito have become engaged in a very public media spat that has seen the former Chelsea coach come under fire for failing to maintain a good relationship with players, with Lotito going as far as to say that the mass January exodus the club has suffered is solely the fault of Sarri.

Since the beginning of the month, the club have lost Taty Castellanos to West Ham, Matteo Guendouzi to Fenerbahçe, and soon-to-be-confirmed Alessio Romagnoli to Al-Sadd, meaning that Sarri has lost his best player in each section of the field.

😳 Total chaos between Sarri & Lazio

After a video surfaced of Lotito saying players were leaving because of Sarri, the coach responded:

“10 days ago I had a player come to my office crying because he was leaving. There’s no issue between me and the team.

Of course when… pic.twitter.com/Ml4R5BhUcQ

— Italian Football TV (@IFTVofficial) January 25, 2026

Amid rumours that the players don’t want to play for Sarri and an underwhelming ninth place in the league, let’s have a look at what’s going wrong at Lazio.

Sarri vs Lotito

The public spat between manager and owner started yesterday, when Lotito was leaked discussing the side's recent poor form and key departures in a phone call with a frustrated fan of the club, and his words leave little to the imagination.

While things were not exactly friendly between the two, with Lotito calling him “a peasant; you probably don’t even have a house,” he eventually revealed that the numerous problems befalling the club were the manager’s fault, saying, “The players want to leave because they don’t want the coach. They are angry with the coach.”

Maurizio #Sarri 🎙 "Those on the outside have no idea what Lazio means, they simply can't understand. It's like being surrounded by stratospheric love. I'm very proud to be loved by these people." 🩵🦅 pic.twitter.com/QcatP6PIvz

— LazioLand (@Lazio_Land) January 24, 2026

Sarri wasted little time in hitting back at the owner - in a press conference on Sunday morning, the Tuscan coach insisted that his presence at the helm was not the root cause of the club's issues and stated that the club's transfer business was not up to him.

“10 days ago, a player left and came to my office crying. I have no problem with the players. Of course, when 15 out of 25 play, there’s always someone unhappy, but that’s not the issue.”

He then took a direct shot at the man at the top of the Lazio food chain, saying, “If you sell a player and say he didn’t get along with Sarri, I find that unfair, especially since the players who left said something completely different to me. They said they wanted to leave because they see no ambition in the club. Something needs to be done in the transfer window, but it’s not up to me.”

Is Sarri Actually the Issue?

There is little doubt that Sarri is a force of nature when in the dugout; his iron will and meticulous planning make it hard for any player in his charge to deny (unless, of course, you are Kepa Arrizabalaga), and his long career has blessed him with vast experience on how to deal with disputes at both a squad and club hierarchy level.

This very experience makes it very hard to believe that Sarri is the person forcing players out of the squad, with the lack of ambitions at the Rome-based outfit a consequence of the ownership and not the manager.

His bold response to Lotito states just as much and represents his first major pushback against the higher-ups.

Of course, it is no secret now that, once a heavy smoker, Sarri has recently dropped his nicotine addiction, and perhaps withdrawals are getting to him, clouding his judgement and shortening his temper, a recipe for fireworks in regard to anything critical that may emerge in the media.

Former Chelsea boss Maurizio Sarri has revealed that he is finally quitting smoking! 🚬❌

The now Lazio manager once said at the height of his habit, he smoked 60 cigarettes a day 😳

▪️ That's 420 a week
▪️ 1,680 a month
▪️ 20,160 a year pic.twitter.com/8izTe2RqSO

— ESPN UK (@ESPNUK) January 19, 2026

But at the end of the day, the Lazio structure means that the majority of major transfer market calls rest with the club's leadership and not Sarri himself. This means that, regardless of the criticism levelled at his manager in the press, the blame primarily lies with Lotito, who seems to be simply deflecting his own mistakes onto the man at the helm.

Lazio’s mid-table placing in Serie A has led to growing calls to sack Sarri, as the club are underperforming their seventh-place standing from last season.

However, the revelation that the club's recent misfortunes are not the fault of the manager are now likely to shift the spotlight onto Lotito himself. No doubt he will have a response ready when he is inevitably queried by the media, and though his retort will surely be snappy and critical, he will need to select his words very carefully if he is to prevent himself from bringing further disruption to the club.