- History of AS Roma and Lazio
- First fatality in Italian football
- Club legends
- Biggest victories and defeats
- AS Roma vs SS Lazio: head-to-head record
- Who has won more: AS Roma or SS Lazio?
- Who is the better side: Lazio or Roma
- Bet on Lazio and Roma at LV BET
What is known as the ‘Derby della Capitale’ (which translates into ‘derby of the capital’) is a football match that never goes unnoticed. The game sparks up a deeply rooted rivalry whenever the two clubs meet, thus absorbing the fascination of football fans from all around the world.
Read up on the Rome derby and bet on the two teams at LV BET.
HISTORY OF AS ROMA AND LAZIO
Lazio and Roma aren’t the top dogs of Italian football at present, with the likes of AC Milan, Inter Milan and Juventus all tussling for glory at the very top of the table. With that said, the city of Rome doesn’t have any larger clubs than Lazio and Roma, and fans from that part of Italy mostly support one of the two teams. For them, only two football clubs exist: Lazio and AS Roma.
HISTORY OF ROME: THE ETERNAL CITY
The Italian capital is also a capital of the Lazio region, which might be all you need to know in order to connect the cultural dots of why the Rome derby is called ‘il Derby della Capitale’.
The city of Rome is the fabric of European history, but its exact establishment is widely debated. One of the traditional stories recounted and handed down by ancient Romans is that of Romulus and Remus — twins who were nurtured by a wolf during their infancy and later went on to build the city. In fact, Roma fans often refer to themselves and their club as ‘lupi’ (Italian for ‘wolves’).
Rome is called ‘the Eternal City’ since ancient Romans believed that, regardless of what happened to the world or how many empires rose or fell, Rome would live on forever. Tibullus — the Roman poet who coined the name in the 1st century BC — was far from the only one to harbour this heartfelt sentiment, since both Roma and Lazio fans boast an undying passion for their beloved city.
HISTORY OF ROMA
Roma was founded in 1927, when a merger of three clubs was orchestrated by Italo Foschi. Three teams called Roman FC, SS Alba-Audace and Fortitudo-Pro Roma SGS merged into what was intended to be a rival of more dominant Northern Italian clubs at the time. The new club was named AS Roma.
Nicknamed the ‘Giallorossi‘ (Italian for ‘yellow and red’) due to the colours of the Roma jersey, the club was not successful immediately following its inception. After an inconsistent run in the 1930s, Roma won an unexpected Serie A title in the 1941/42 season, catapulted to glory by local hero Amedeo Amadei.
Roma failed to build on its success in the years following World War I, and it was eventually relegated to Serie B at the end of the 1950/51 season. The club’s lowest point arrived a decade later, when club manager Juan Carlos Lorenzo announced that Roma couldn’t pay its players and that it couldn’t afford to travel to Vicenza for its next fixture. Roma fans promptly pooled in money to save the club from bankruptcy with a fundraiser at the Sistine Theatre, and the predicament was later fully avoided with the election of new club president Franco Evangelisti.
So far, Roma has won three Serie A titles, the Coppa Italia nine times, the Italian Super Cup twice and the UEFA Europa Conference League — a title that arrived last season under the management of José Mourinho.
HISTORY OF LAZIO
Lazio was founded in 1900 but the club only played at an amateur level before officially joining the league competition in 1912. The decades that followed were somewhat unremarkable for Lazio, whose best pre-World War I result was a second-place finish in 1937. Helping the ‘Biancocelesti‘ – Italian for ‘white and azure’ — to that remarkable finish was one of the greatest strikers of all time: Silvio Piola.
The years following World War I weren’t anything to reminisce about for Lazio fans either. The club only managed a mixture of mid and upper-table results at the time, along with a solitary Coppa Italia win in 1958. The club was relegated to Serie B in 1961 and again in 1980, when it was caught in a cyclone of match-fixing scandals along with AC Milan.
That event was the advent of Lazio’s darkest history. The club returned to Serie A three years later, but it only managed a last-day escape from relegation. The following season saw Lazio finish last, thus cementing it to Serie B once again. Lazio was then docked nine points for another scandal, thus complicating its livelihood in the Italian second division — to the extent that Lazio barely avoided a Serie C relegation that year.
Lazio’s fortunes changed in the 1990s, when Gianmarco Calleri took hold of the club’s finances together with Sergio Cragnotti, which catapulted Lazio to the top flight of Italian football. Lazio went on to sign several world-class players during their successful stint at the turn of the millennium, including Christian Vieri, Juan Sebastián Verón and Hernán Crespo. Together with the likes of Alessandro Nesta, Siniša Mihajlović, Pavel Nedvěd and Marcelo Salas, Lazio managed to win a Serie A title, a Coppa Italia double, the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup, the UEFA Super Cup and the Italian Super Cup.
FIRST FATALITY IN ITALIAN FOOTBALL
The history of football is far from sunshine and rainbows. Among the darkest moments of the Derby della Capitale is the tragedy of Lazio fan Vincenzo Paparelli, who, in October 1979, was fatally struck by a flare before the derby match commenced. The flare had been launched by a Roma fan in the Curva Sud, who was apprehended by police two years after the incident.
Paprelli’s death sent shockwaves around Italy, evoking a necessity for stricter security within stadia. Rome’s mayor at the time, Luigi Petroselli, offered Paparelli’s wife to cover the expenses of the funeral, whereas condolences and support poured in from club captain Giuseppe Wilson and other Lazio players.
The funeral was attended by thousands of people and a plaque was later erected as a tribute to Paparelli.
CLUB LEGENDS
With more than a century of Italian football under their belt, Lazio and Roma have had their fair share of club legends — some of whom are still remembered to this day. From Francesco Totti to Silvio Piola: here are some of the most famous players to wear either kit of the two Roman teams.
AMEDEO AMADEI (ROMA)
Occupying a spot in Roma’s Hall of Fame is none other than Amedeo Amadei: a well-rounded centre-forward who was best known for his superb volleying and prolific goal-scoring capabilities. With 110 goals scored in 234 appearances for the Giallorossi, Amadei was known as the ‘Eighth King of Rome’ among Roma ultras. He won the 1941/42 Serie A title with Roma — his only trophy of a goal-laden career.
SILVIO PIOLA (LAZIO)
As mentioned before, Piola was one of Italy’s best strikers of all time. His physical presence was one to be reckoned with, and that is what enabled him to score a trove of headed goals during his time with Lazio. His goal-scoring tally stands at 159 in 243 appearances.
Piola was Serie A’s top scorer in the 1936/37 and 1942/43 seasons, each time scoring a total of 21 goals in a single season. In 1938, he helped Italy win the World Cup against Hungary when he scored two goals in the final.
GIACOMO LOSI (ROMA)
Another player occupying Roma’s Hall of Fame is Giacomo Losi, nicknamed ‘Core de Roma’ (Romanesco for ‘heart of Rome’). Losi spent his whole career with Roma, and set the record for the most appearances with the Giallorossi — later broken by Francesco Totti.
The moment Losi became a favourite among Roma’s ultras was in a match against Sampdoria in 1961, when he picked up an injury but refused to leave the pitch, seeing as Roma didn’t have any more substitutions available. Nevertheless, he scored the winning goal from a corner kick, thus sending the Curva Sud in a frenzy.
GIORGIO CHINAGLIA (LAZIO)
Another top-tier centre-forward was Giorgio Chinaglia. The Italian bagged 123 goals in 248 appearances for SS Lazio, helping the Roman club lift the Serie A title in the 1973/74 season. Known for his physical prowess, Chinaglia was a headache for all ranges of defenders and he was widely regarded as the first old-fashioned centre-forward of his time.
FRANCESCO TOTTI (ROMA)
Holding the joint record for most goals scored in the Derby della Capitale (along with Dino da Costa) is none other than Francesco Totti. A product of Roma’s youth sector, Totti was a classy attacking midfielder and second striker who scored 307 goals in 783 appearances, along with a good 145 assists.
The Italian won a significant number of silverware during his career, including the Serie A, the Coppa Italia, the Italian Super Cup as well as the 2006 FIFA World Cup.
ALESSANDRO NESTA (LAZIO)
Nesta was a product of Lazio’s youth academy and one of the most elegant defenders of his time. His early years saw him test out the striker and midfielder positions before later excelling as a centre-back. Nesta went on to lift the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup against Mallorca and the European Super Cup against Manchester United, before heading to AC Milan for a record-breaking transfer fee of €30m.
BIGGEST VICTORIES AND DEFEATS
The Derby della Capitale is one of the most heated derbies in the world, and fans who have been on either side of the Stadio Olimpico can definitely attest to that. With such a deeply rooted rivalry comes a gargantuan level of pressure on SS Lazio and Roma players to perform at their very best on derby day.
The biggest victory in a derby match to date is Roma – Lazio 5-0 — a superb victory for Roma that happened in the 1933/34 season, but that seemed to have been the last of Lazio’s success in the years that followed. After that derby match, Lazio only managed to triumph once in the next 10 derby matches.
The figure for the most goals scored in a single derby stands at six. This happened three times: once in a 3-3 draw in 1998, another in a 5-1 victory for Roma in 2002 and the last in a 4-2 victory for Lazio in 2009. Since then, the highest number of goals bagged in a single derby match has been five — both in 3-2 victories for Lazio in 2012 and 2021.
AS ROMA VS S.S. LAZIO: HEAD-TO-HEAD RECORD
With all the information above, the question of which of the two teams has had the better of one another overall must surely be brewing. Although the Roman derby always features two very balanced teams, there has indeed been a winner of the fixture so far.
In 178 official matches between Lazio and Roma, there have been 48 wins for Lazio and 68 wins for Roma, with 62 draws. Lazio holds a tally of 181 goals netted in the derby, while Roma boasts an even-better lead of 230 goals.
The first derby match happened in 1929, and it saw Roma clinch victory with a goal to nil. If we hit the fast-forward button, we can see that things are perfectly equal between the two teams; with one draw and two wins a piece for Lazio and AS Roma.
- 2022: Roma 3-0 Lazio
- 2021: Lazio 3-2 Roma
- 2021: Roma 2-0 Lazio
- 2021: Lazio 3-0 Roma
- 2020: Roma 1-1 Lazio
Either of the two clubs will be looking to disrupt the perfect balance that the last five matches have brought about to the city of Rome. The last four derbies have seen plenty of goals, so hardcore fans of Serie A won’t miss the chance to book their front-row seat to the action. Book your ticket to the derby in Rome by visiting LV BET.
WHO HAS WON MORE: AS ROMA OR SS LAZIO?
Although the two Roman teams share a fierce rivalry that won’t die out anytime soon, SS Lazio and AS Roma have won a similar number of trophies. One of the major differences between the two sides is that Lazio won its first European trophy before Roma did — something that most Lazio supporters never fail to mention in debates about their rivalry with Roma.
THE INTERNATIONAL LEVEL
Lazio has the upper hand when it comes to European silverware. The club has won one edition of the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup in the 1998/99 season and the UEFA Super Cup in 1999. These successes came during a time when Lazio boasted quite a financial power, but this proved to be somewhat short-lived. In the following years, Lazio had to offload several key players to rebalance its books.
On the other hand, Roma’s first breakthrough in Europe arrived last season, when the club beat Feyenoord 1-0 to lift the UEFA Europa Conference League — with Nicolò Zaniolo bagging the only goal of the match.
THE NATIONAL LEVEL
There’s a similar balance in Italian silverware between the two Roman teams. Lazio has won two Serie A titles (the latest in the 1999/2000 season), whereas Roma has won three (the latest coming a year after Lazio’s last title). Lazio has won seven Coppa Italia titles and 5 Super Cup titles, while Roma has won nine and two, respectively.
WHO IS THE BETTER SIDE: LAZIO OR ROMA?
Comparing AS Roma and SS Lazio is never a simple feat. The two city rivals share more in common than just the Stadio Olimpico, with a roughly equally sized trophy cabinet. If we want to stick to numbers, we’ll see that Lazio has won 18 titles while Roma has won 17 (both figures include one Serie B trophy).
This comparison highlights the importance of Lazio’s success during the 1999/2000 season, when it boasted a squad capable of going toe to toe with the very best.
Enough beating around the bush: who really is the better team? Asking the Curva Nord and the Curva Sud will most likely yield different answers, but the truth is that both AS Roma and SS Lazio are roughly on par with one another.
BET ON LAZIO, ROMA AND OTHER CLUBS AT LV BET
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