If you ever want a heady rush of nostalgia, just familiarize yourself with the last quarter century of the Serie A assist charts. The best of the best have found themselves at the peak of Italian artisans. Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldinho, Andrea Pirlo, Massimo Oddo… weirdly not Kaka. Dudes really can literally just sit around and name old Serie A and just have the best time.
Skip ahead to this season though and you might be in for a surprise. The frontrunner to be this season’s assist champion, with Christian Pulisic and Romelu Lukaku in his rearview mirror, is a left back who struggled for game time with Nottingham Forest last season and this is earning comparisons with Javier Zanetti. Nuno Tavares has come a long way in a short space of time.
Didn’t see this coming? You might not be the only one. To hear Tavares explain it, even his new teammates were taken aback by the impact he made since arriving from Arsenal on loan in the summer “They were quite surprised,” he tells CBS Sports. “They didn’t know me that well and I hadn’t played a lot of matches.”
They know him now. Tavares has eight assists through 20 Serie A matches this season and is a key reason why Lazio remain on the outer reaches of the title race, as well as topping the league phase of the Europa League. Muscle injuries have allowed others to eat into his lead at the top of the charts — the 25-year-old has missed four of the last 15 Serie A matches with muscle issues — but the signs are that he can lay on a few more goals for his teammates before the season is out.
His 0.26 expected assists per 90 league minutes place him among august company, just ahead of Rafael Leao and Hakan Calhanoglu with the quartet ahead of him including Ademola Lookman and Paulo Dybala. He ranks in Serie A’s top two for progressive carries, top 10 for successful crosses and big chances created, its top 20 for passes into the penalty area. If assist champions can occasionally be decided by who is teeing up the best finishers, Tavares can at least rest assured that he is getting the ball in the right spots.
If the statistics are eye-opening they are nothing to the eye-popping nature of his best performances. Take last weekend’s display in the 2-1 win at Milan, one which had CBS Sports Golazo analyst Nigel Reo-Coker delivering those Zanetti comparisons. A “bullet train”, as Mike Grella put it, though when Tavares watches the coverage back his eyes are drawn to an earlier comment. “Drug test him,” joked former Leeds United and New York Red Bulls winger Grella. “I haven’t seen a player like that in Italy, maybe ever.”
Tavares is in stitches. “My friends were asking me the same question, what kind of drugs am I on? Of course, it’s a compliment, I’m really grateful that people can see this part of my game [to compare me to Zanetti].”
Milan will certainly be glad to see the back of Tavares for this season. The left back turned the tide in the second half of their meeting at the Stadio Olimpico on Aug. 31, providing his first two assists of the campaign. Not bad for a player with one minute of club football under his belt since February.
His run and pass for Boulaye Dia set the tone for what was to come in Biaconcelesti, an explosive overlapping run pulling him away from Emerson Royale. The byline rapidly approaching, Tavares takes a moment to assess his options. Only when Dia has wriggled away from Strahinja Pavlovic does the low cross go in, slipping beyond the outstretched left boot of Mike Maignan to allow for the most straightforward of finishes.
“This game was when I came back from injury,” says Tavares, watching back his assists with delight. “I wasn’t 100 percent sure if I was ready or not so the first half I was getting a bit soft, trying to understand if I was. In the second half, I was getting into my head, saying now I’m ready to push myself. I wasn’t in the best shape but after the first assist, I had to keep pushing.
“I knew they were tired. When I know that, that’s when I push myself even more. I know my body, my stamina. I know I have to kill them.”
Such a ruthless view of the game might come as a surprise to those who last saw Tavares in great depth in Amazon’s All or Nothing series, following Arsenal’s 2021-22 season. Two of the more memorable moments of the series involved the Portuguese youngster, who had just arrived from Benfica that summer. Early in the season Mikel Arteta and his coaching staff struggle to reach a player who they view as having a changeable mood. By the end, Arteta is stood a few inches from Tavares, berating his performance with such aggression that he has long since gone hoarse.
Memories of that experience will not fade soon for Tavares but he has used the dressing down he received in the London Stadium dressing room in May 2022 to change his mindset, to become a player who is not afraid to make mistakes as his coaching staff feared he was during his time in the Arsenal XI.
“Nobody is perfect, I learned from that,” he says. “As soon as you grow up, you understand you can get to another level and there are things you can’t do. That’s growing up, making mistakes to get better.”
It helps that Tavares feels he has found the right club for him. Eighteen months ago that was not the case. On deadline day in September 2023 his options were to stay put at Arsenal, where first-team opportunities would be few or far between, or chance his arm with a loan move to Nottingham Forest. “Actually it wasn’t my decision to go to Forest, I had to accept,” he says. “I went there to play football because that’s what I want. Things didn’t go well, as I expected.”
Injuries were certainly a contributory factor and Tavares is at pains to praise the tactical qualities of Nuno Espirito Santo, who afforded him a run of games early in 2024 before further setbacks. Still, for Forest it always appeared that the youngster was there to plug a gap at left back. They might have had an option to sign him but it seemed clear from early on that Tavares was not going to put down roots.
“After those past years, I learned from my decisions. It’s different a club having an interest in you and a club who wants you. I felt Lazio wanted me for real. I was really interested to learn about the project and what they had for me. I could feel everything inside the club, the way they wanted me so bad.
“I was trying to find a home last season. The balance in my career hasn’t been the best I would say but I think now I have the best thing and the best club to get in shape, to do things right and find stability.
“It’s really good actually. It’s a club who plays for titles, who play in a really beautiful city [ask Tavares what he is most enjoying about life in Rome and you will swiftly hear about the weather]. All in one, that creates a good energy. I want to win titles and be competitive. That’s why I joined Lazio.”
With his former Arsenal and Marseille teammate Matteo Guendouzi on hand to show him the ropes — “to play with him is amazing, to play against is the worst thing, because of his personality and the way he plays, the way he gets into your head if he plays against you” — he soon settled into Lazio. Tavares is glowing in his praise of Marco Baroni, relishing the trust that he is given to play the game his way. Watching back his assist against Como, Tavares’ first instinct is to credit his manager, who drew up the cross to Pedro just inside the area after spotting the opposition’s tendency to crash the posts when defending crosses.
Certainly Baroni has helped Tavares to discover his confidence. “In my head, I see every full back, defender and winger. The way I play, the things I do, I have specific characteristics on my game. I do things other fullbacks cannot do because of my strength and stamina.
“That’s what I feel in my head, unstoppable. When I’m playing now I can feel the energy of the opponent. I know if I go against him, he’ll have to respect me.”
Settled in a city that gives him a “little bit of peace” and a club that values him, surely this is the spot for Tavares in the long term? Lazio have a purchase option on his services that becomes an obligation, understood to be worth around $8.5 million, subject to certain sporting criteria.
So far those have not been fulfilled and speculation is mounting that he could go elsewhere, perhaps succeeding Theo Hernandez at the San Siro after giving Milan so many headaches in his encounters with them. Even if the fundamentals still need to be ironed out it is clear just how much Lazio value their temporary signing. As early as October, club president Claudio Lotito was refusing to countenance his left back’s sale even for $75 million.
“I’m still an Arsenal player,” says Tavares. “I don’t know what’s going to happen but staying is a possibility of course. I’m feeling really good here.”
It’s easy to see the appeal of la dolce vita for Tavares. He has found a club that allows him to play his way and is rewarding their faith in emphatic fashion. Keep up his form and the next generation of nostalgists might be getting misty-eyed when his name comes up.
How to watch Viktoria Plzen vs. Lazio
Date: Thursday, March 6 | Time: 3 p.m. ET
Location: Doosan Arena — Plzen, Czechia
Live stream: Paramount+
Odds: Viktoria +320; Draw +260; Lazio -115
