Gattuso's Challenge: Reviving Tavares and Facing Milan

Gennaro Gattuso doesn’t do ordinary reunions. Not with Milan. Not at the Stadio Olimpico. Not on a night when his own Lazio crowd is thinned out by a boycott and the away end is packed with Rossoneri colours.

This is the club where he grew up as a footballer, where he fought, snarled, and lifted trophies, and later returned to sit on the bench as coach. Now he stands in the opposite technical area, trying to beat the team that built his name.

“I built my career at Milan, I had champions by my side, and that made it a lot easier,” he told DAZN Italia before kick-off.

He said he has stopped reading the papers, preferring to shut out the noise and focus on work. The emotion is there, of course, but he keeps it buried under the usual steel.

The backdrop is unusual. There are more Milan fans than Lazio supporters inside the Olimpico, with the home ultras still protesting against President Claudio Lotito. The atmosphere feels tilted, almost like a neutral venue painted red and black.

Gattuso, though, has a job to do.

“We went out in the first round of the Coppa Italia, but the lads believe in what they are doing,” he said. “The players need to put passion into the game. If there is a little more enthusiasm today, that is thanks to the players.”

He knows exactly what he is up against. Milan’s shape, their traps, their moments of sudden violence on the counter.

“We analysed Milan,” Gattuso explained. “At times they can sit back with five in a row, then can hurt you on the counter-attack with their wingers, like Chukwueze with his crosses. At times they are aggressive, at others they sit deeper. We must have courage and show respect to them, but do things our way for a good performance.”

It is classic Gattuso: respect, but no fear. Organisation, but demands for heart.

Then he turned to one of the most intriguing players in his squad, and produced a metaphor that only he could.

Nuno Tavares is 26 now. For years he has carried the label of “potential” without ever quite cashing it in. Benfica, Arsenal, Olympique Marseille, Lazio – flashes of brilliance, stretches of inconsistency, the same question trailing him from club to club.

Gattuso did not hold back.

“I always said that Tavares is worthy of Real Madrid,” he said. “He feels like someone who lost his parents young, received a big inheritance, and in five years it went up in smoke.”

It is a brutal image. And yet, in Gattuso’s eyes, it is not an insult. It is a warning.

“This is a player who ought to be at Real Madrid. He’s got everything it takes, he has pace, right foot, left foot. He is unusual, but after a match he needs his time to recover, but he’s a good lad, you need to get into his head and make him understand.”

The message is clear: the tools are there, the career is not.

“He knows he has talent and could’ve had 10/12 years at Real Madrid with his qualities. You’ve just got to get him to understand.”

For Gattuso, the battle tonight is not only against Milan’s wingers or their counter-attacks. It is also inside the minds of players like Nuno Tavares, whose careers can still be rescued, reshaped, maybe even transformed.

If Lazio are to turn this season, those inheritances can’t keep going up in smoke.