Massimo's dagger pierces Lazio's Roman opera

Lazio lost a derby they owned, and destiny has a cruel sense of theatre. For seventy-three minutes the Olimpico sang of a team top of Serie A, of eighteen points before this evening, of a title race led from the front. Then Gianpaolo Massimo stepped forward in the seventy-fourth minute and turned the whole performance into tragedy.

It was a strange opera from the start. Lazio held the ball like a conductor holding an orchestra — 66 per cent of it, 547 passes completed of 589 — and yet the music never found its climax. Thirteen shots, five on target, one clear chance. Juan José Girón ran himself into the ground, 13.3 kilometres and nine dribbles, and still the net did not move. Nicola Grimaldi barely misplaced a pass; Rom Shor, handed the attacking role while Matan Jan waited on the bench, could not unpick the Viola knot.

Fiorentina, meanwhile, played the part of the assassin. Six shots, three on target, and a cutting edge that Lazio never matched. Massimo was booked early, then delivered the blow that mattered, and his side's five yellow cards read like scars from a battle they were happy to win ugly. Jofre Costa, the summer arrival from Barcelona, went off injured after twenty-eight minutes; Raymond Boersma came on and the wall held.

There is a bitterness in this for Lazio beyond the scoreline. In May they beat Fiorentina 3-0; in January they lost to them by a single goal, and now the same narrow wound has opened again. Fiorentina climb within touching distance of the leaders, and on this evidence they will not be the side that folds when winter comes.

On Sunday Fiorentina face Juventus, the team the papers say is quietly settling into its autumn. If the Viola defend like this again, the old lady of Turin may find the music less pleasant than expected.