Conti hopes Samp can ride Marassi wave to beat Lazio

Assistant manager Francesco Conti is hopeful Sampdoria can feed off the energy provided by the Blucerchiati faithful and beat Lazio on Saturday night to further extend the team’s rich vein of form.

Samp are unbeaten in six games in all competitions and have won their last five home fixtures – and Conti says much of the credit for that must go to the Doria fans.

With Marco Giampaolo struck down with a bout of flu, it was Sampdoria’s second in command who faced the media ahead of our Serie A Week 16 encounter.

“We want to keep nurturing this fantastic chemistry we have with our fans at the moment. There’s a tremendous buzz in the air and it’s energising the team,” he explained.

“The crowd are really getting behind us and they’re playing a crucial role. The lads are feeding off it and want to repay the fans.”

Conti is, however, mindful of the fact that Lazio will be smarting from their derby defeat to Roma last time out.

“We’re expecting a very tricky encounter tomorrow. Lazio have lots of classy individual players and they have one of the best away records this season. They’ll be hurting too after losing the derby. We must be ready for them and play like Sampdoria.”

Following last weekend’s impressive victory over high-flying Torino, Samp have every reason to believe they can claim another scalp on Saturday.

“Another win would show great consistency on our part. We learnt a great deal last week: we had our cup game, in which some of our so-called reserves performed really well and showed they can stake their claim for a starting berth, then we produced a superb display against Torino. A further good performance against Lazio would be just reward for all the hard work we’ve been putting in.”

Could some of Samp’s ‘reserves’ force their way into the starting line-up on Saturday?

“There may be one or two changes but we’ll probably go with a similar side to the one that started against Torino,” Conti replied. “The players who are getting the nod need to prove they deserve their spot though, because the other lads behind them are pushing really hard.”

Conti also provided an update on the injured players.

“[Emiliano] Viviano is working his way back to fitness but he’s not there yet. [Daniel] Pavlovic and [Jacopo] Sala will start training again with the squad next week. [Carlos] Carbonero is a quality midfielder coming back from a nasty injury.”

Sampdoria v Lazio kicks off at 20:45 CET on Saturday evening.