Lazio made a silly mistake on Friday. The Serie A club asked fans to vote in a Twitter poll for who they think should be the Lazio Player of the Season.
The choice should be pretty simple. Ciro Immobile was one of the top players in all of Europe, scoring 41 goals across all competitions and tying Mauro Icardi with 29 goals to win Serie A’s Capocannoniere as the league’s top goal scorer.
But this is this internet, where things are never simple or straightforward, especially when impassioned Liverpool fans get involved.
Included in the vote with Immobile were Spanish midfielder Luis Alberto, Serbian midfielder Sergej Milinković-Savić and, crucially, Brazilian midfielder Lucas Leiva. The former Liverpool player’s inclusion had a predictable result on the poll’s results.
'Player of the Season'
nomi tra cui scegliere: chi è stato il miglior calciatore biancoceleste della stagione?Vota qui!
— S.S.Lazio (@OfficialSSLazio) June 1, 2018
Immobile accounted for 50 goals. Lucas Leiva accounted for nine, and while it included this fun goal, the haul was less than both Luis Alberto (31) and Milinković-Savić (20). But the man who spent 10 years in Liverpool is running away with the Lazio Player of the Season contest, with 70 percent of more than 15,000 votes as of this writing.
Presumably, Le Aquile will ignore the Twitter poll and give Immobile the Lazio Player of the Season award because that just makes sense. Only three players (Lionel Messi, Mo Salah and Cristiano Ronaldo) scored more goals across all competitions in Europe than Immobile.
45 - Lionel Messi finished the 2017-18 campaign as the top scoring player in the Top 5 European Leagues (all competitions); netting one more than both Mohamed Salah and Cristiano Ronaldo. Sensations. pic.twitter.com/Uw9BZ919K8
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) May 27, 2018
But, Lucas Leiva is such a likable guy, maybe they’ll just name him the Lazio Player of the Season anyway just for fun.