Alasdair Mackenzie reports from the Stadio Olimpico, Rome.

It has taken a long time, but Lazio have finally fallen in love with the Europa League.

Thursday’s anxious, fingernail-reducing 1-1 draw with Viktoria Plzen sent a 40,000-strong crowd at the Stadio Olimpico into the kind of post-match euphoria usually reserved for Derby della Capitale or cup final wins.

Maybe it was just relief. After all, this game was a proper battle for Lazio, who were second best throughout a first half where Plzen rattled the bar and then had to fight back from Pavel Sulc’s well-struck opener.

Alessio Romagnoli rose at Lazio’s 12th corner of the night to head home the leveller for – astonishingly – his third goal in three games. This one was perhaps the most important for the Aquile’s unlikely goalscoring hero, sending his side into the last eight against Bodo/Glimt with a 3-2 aggregate victory.

But it wasn’t just the response to the game that highlighted how much things have changed. A crowd of 40,000 is obviously quite some way from a sell-out at this vast arena, but it is another world from the attendances that have trickled through the turnstiles for 6.45pm Europa League kick-offs in recent years, which have ranged between 8,000 and 25,000.

A beautiful choreography had been arranged for the occasion of an eagle spreading its wings across the Curva Nord, brought to life by fans shining the torch on their smartphones. Not every game gets this kind of treatment. This was a night to be marked, to be savoured. 

For just the third time since 2003, Lazio made a European quarter-final. And for the first time in what seems like decades, the fans are genuinely buzzing about Europe’s second-tier competition – thanks in large part to the dazzling work of coach Marco Baroni.  

100th time lucky for Lazio

For more than 15 years, since the tournament was rebranded from UEFA Cup to Europa League in 2009, this competition has only brought disappointment for the Biancocelesti.

Attendances dwindled to embarrassingly small numbers as fans lost interest after seeing half-hearted efforts repeatedly fall by the wayside. Laziali aren’t the only Italian fans to show a certain apathy towards the lower-tier European competitions, but that attitude now appears to be changing for the better, no doubt helped by Atalanta’s stunning victory last year.

Some illustrious names tried and failed to shake Lazio out of its Europa League daze. Simone Inzaghi, a Champions League finalist with Inter, couldn’t do it. Maurizio Sarri, who claimed the first trophy of his career by winning this competition at Chelsea, couldn’t either. For Scudetto winner Stefano Pioli, it was the same story.

Thursday’s win over Viktoria Plzen marked Lazio’s 100th game of the Europa League era, and a litany of heartbreaks have been packed into those 9,000 minutes of football.

While the Biancocelesti had some memorable moments in the UEFA Cup, losing an all-Italian final to a Ronaldo-inspired Inter in 1997-98 before falling to Jose Mourinho’s Porto in the 2002-03 semi-finals, Europa League campaigns have by and large been painful experiences.

There were the second-leg collapses in their previous two quarter-final appearances against Fenerbahce (2012-13) and Salzburg (2015-16), and group-stage exits coming courtesy of embarrassing losses to the likes of Midtjylland, Cluj and Levski Sofia in other years.

Indeed, Laziali still cling dearly to the memories of that glorious night in at Villa Park when Pavel Nedved and Christian Vieri took Sven-Göran Eriksson’s 1998-99 squad to victory over Mallorca in the UEFA Cup Winner’s Cup Final, the club’s only piece of European silverware.

Now, there is reason to believe again. Marco Baroni’s appointment in the summer flipped the disc, and Lazio are playing a new tune entirely this season on the European stage.

Baroni oversees Europa transformation

Aged 61, Baroni has had to work his way up to European football the hard way. In a 25-year coaching career, he has risen through the ranks from the fourth tier to the first, with assistant and Primavera roles along the way.

He earned his first ‘big’ job off the back of leading Verona to an improbable Serie A survival last year, but it is safe to say his arrival in Rome wasn’t met with great fanfare or lofty expectations from the fans, who kicked off the campaign more intent on renewing long-running protests against owner Claudio Lotito.

However, Baroni wasted no time in proving his doubters wrong, with his thrillingly exciting yet effective brand of gung-ho attacking football quickly transforming the atmosphere inside the Olimpico.

So, how has he done it? One place where Baroni has succeeded where his predecessors struggled is in his regular rotation of the squad.

While Lazio enjoyed trophy wins, Champions League knockout football and even a second-place Serie A finish under Inzaghi and Sarri, they were reliant on a strong starting 11 featuring star names like Ciro Immobile, Luis Alberto, Felipe Anderson and Sergej Milinkovic-Savic.

The squad renovation that has since occurred, with all those players now gone following last summer’s sales, left Baroni with a less talented but more balanced pool of players.

That has made him far more willing and able than his predecessors to make regular changes without disrupting his team’s flow or breeding discontent from benched players. Minutes have been shared carefully and widely.

Baroni has also instilled a newfound never-say-die mentality that is a world away from Sarri’s team, who struggled to get back into a game if they went behind.

No side in Serie A has scored more goals than Lazio (18) from the 75th minute onwards, with six of those coming in stoppage time. Their astonishing last-gasp win against Milan demonstrated that attitude, as did the two legs against Plzen, where Gustav Isaksen pinched a first-leg win for the nine-man visitors with the final kick before Romagnoli sealed the fightback in Rome in the 77th minute.

After Thursday’s progression to the last eight, he finds himself in a remarkable position. Baroni is the architect of a Lazio side that has never wanted to lift the Europa League trophy more – and never looked likelier.

The former Napoli Scudetto winner has also got them playing well away from home in Europe in a somewhat miraculous turnaround. Before this season, Lazio had won just three of their last 18 Europa League away matches. Baroni came in and won his first three in a row before making it four out of five in the Czech Republic.

However, perhaps the most important thing has been his attitude towards this competition from day one. Ahead of the opening game against Dynamo Kyiv, Baroni said: “The Europa League is definitely an objective for us. This certainly isn’t a hindrance in our season, but a big opportunity for all of us.”

He set the goal early, and his actions have backed up his words, with his side finishing top of the league phase table with six wins out of eight to set themselves on what now looks like a makeable route to the final. 

Lazio’s quarter-final opponents are Norwegians Bodo/Glimt, ranked 25 places below them in UEFA’s club coefficients. Beyond that lies Eintracht Frankfurt or Tottenham Hotspur. While they are all teams to respect, they certainly aren’t teams to fear.

The Aquile suddenly find themselves in a position where they are likely to be favourites in each of their matches between now and a potential Bilbao final.

It is a remarkable turnaround, made all the more so by the understated, underrated coach who brought it about.