Lazio Stories is a blog created by Dag Jenkins and Simon Basten.
We know that there are many non-Italian Lazio supporters that perhaps have decided to support the Biancocelesti because they liked Beppe Signori, Paul Gascoigne or more recently Ciro Immobile and Sergej Milinkovic-Savic.
Perhaps these new supporters do not know the history of the club, the heroes, the games and seasons that have brought us where we are now.
There are players that have become legends (Sante Ancherani, Silvio Piola, Bob Lovati, Giorgio Chinaglia, Giuliano Fiorini, just to mention a few). Teams that are legendary (the 1974 scudetto, the -9 team, the scudetto of 2000), stories of joy and of sadness. Lazio have gone through a lot over the years and to this day they have always been seen as the punching ball of Italian football.
With great humbleness we want to try to tell the story of Lazio on a daily basis with our “Today in Lazio History” series. Every day we choose a game that Lazio has played on that day and talk about the season too. Not only. We choose a protagonist of that match and write a bio on him. This part of the blog started on November 14 2022.
You will also find reports on the games in the current season, player stats and other articles.
We started on November 14, 2022 so you will not find everything immediately, but if you follow us you will begin to learn more about the glorious Società Sportiva Lazio.
Lazio Wiki and other sources
This website would not have been possible without Lazio Wiki, the great online encyclopaedia of Lazio in Italian. This is where we got the majority(some) of our sources, ideas and facts.
Other sources are obviously Wikipedia and all the sections on the various football teams. Also important to fill gaps has been Corriere Calciatori, the archive of La Stampa and all those videos on YouTube that people have uploaded over the decades. We have embedded what we have found wherever possible.
The rest is from memory.
We are highly indebted to our families across the channel and in Italy that have given us a hand in getting all of this together.
Who are we?
Dag Jenkins and Simon Basten met at the age of six. They did not go to school together, not initially anyway, but their fathers played football on a Saturday in a team called The Dale Wonderboot made up of parents, teachers and other beings from St. George’s English School in Rome. So they would see each other every other Saturday as Simon’s parents were divorced and he got to see his Dad every other weekend.
They took a liking to each other, began to exchange Panini trading cards and played football with the other kids, all children of the players on the pitch. Simon’s footballing ability was pretty poor, and never improved beyond the “poor” stage, Dag was phenomenal at least in Simon’s eyes (Simon would later call him Daghinho).
Among the things in common was their love for a football club: Lazio. Why Lazio? Because the Biancocelesti had British elements in the team: Giuseppe Wilson, Lazio’s skipper, was born in Darlington and was half British, and there was Giorgio Chinaglia, the star of the team, the centre-forward, whose family had emigrated to Cardiff when he was nine and he played a few years for Swansea City (Dag's father is Welsh but coming from Cardiff he is definitely not a Swansea City fan...).
They were youngsters growing up abroad, Dag a welsh/Norwegian and Simon English but they were not really Welsh, Norwegian, British or Italian and lacked a sense of belonging. They found it in Lazio, maybe they did not have a real nationality but no-one could say they were not true Laziali.
Lazio were one of the better teams in Serie A at that time, so it was only natural for two boys to support a winning side. They continued doing so for all of their lives even when Lazio were far from being the strongest, to put it mildly.
Simon started going to St. George’s a year later and when they became of age they started going to see Lazio at the Stadio Olimpico together. Dag started a little earlier than Simon because he had an elder brother.
Not only, they both had their Lazio books, where they would collect newspaper cuttings, tickets, do their stats on the player ratings, etc. Dag always finished his, Simon would get depressed if Lazio was not doing well and give up sometime during the course of the season.
When the difficult 1980's began they went to see every match at home, including friendlies, and sometimes in the holidays they also went to the Tommaso Maestrelli Training Ground to watch their heroes train.
In case of a poor result there was a certain kind compensation in those wonderful doughnuts sold on the corner of Ponte Milvio. Those doughnuts were even tastier when there were celebrations.
When they were old enough they started to go to see away matches, occasionally accompanied by their friend Danny. Dag would continue to go to the away games and was present in Paris, Birmingham and Torino.
In the later years of school they drifted apart a little, but there was always Lazio. There was no need to make an appointment, they would look out for each other in Curva Nord and watch the game together.
When things got more organised and they got older, Simon got a season ticket and Dag would occasionally watch the game with him or in another area of the Olimpico. They would meet after the match at Ponte Milvio and the doughnut was replaced by a beer.
They still go together to the Olimpico to see Lazio, though not as often.
The love for Lazio is just one of the common elements in a friendship that has lasted almost 50 years.
Lazio Stories is Dag and Simon’s modern Lazio book.
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