Inter-Fiorentina: the reality behind the fog

It was easy to predict they were waiting for our defeat. What is that quote? The higher they bring you, the deeper will be your fall. Ok, I can understand media, I can understand our oppositors and other teams' supporters but I don't think it's time to dramatize the last match against Fiorentina.
Or, at least, there are some aspects we should analyze but they aren't about our strenghts or our chance to win the Championship because we're still on the run for it.
THE PRESSING BY FIORENTINA: Sincerely, I have seen a match played for 30', maybe less and I haven't seen this "lesson" by Fiorentina. I have seen players that run more than ours, and if I add this to the Fiorentina's pre-season I can only imagine Paulo Sousa has athletically prepared his players to have a strong start on the season. Or, at least, you don't think Fiorentina is better than Barcellona.
I think the key of the match was the strong pressing that they made starting from the two strikers that used to attack our defensors. We weren't ready to take on this situation: Sousa must have watched some matches of us and he must have seen that we like to start the action from Handanovic to one of the two central defensors. Letting Kalinic or Ilicic pressing Miranda and Medel meant to cut our actions from the beginning.
Was this the "good soccer"? Yes it is, it's a good tactic but it's also a tactic you can do if you have a good energy in your legs and it's not normal to have this fuel in this moment of the season, at least you don't prepare the team to have a fall during the autumn and this would mean that Fiorentina will drop energies from next november, but this is another subject. What it's important to know is if Fiorentina didn't manage to score one or more goals could be a problem for them because they should have lost their energies on the second half.
So, we should resist for the whole first half, and focusing our efforts to the second half.
HANDANOVIC AND SO ON: We've talked about Fiorentina's match so far, but now it's time to write about Inter. Well, I've just wrote that we should resist in the first half but we didn't, moreover, we have played FOR Fiorentina and not AGAINST Fiorentina.
The mistake done by Handanovic after one minute with the following penalty was the best gift to Fiorentina because it allowed them to play exactly as they wanted: defense and pressing to our defensors to cut our actions from the beginning and, being on defense finding the counter-attack knowing that our physical condition is not optimal now.
Anyway, not happy with the Handanovic's mistake, we have continued with mistakes by Guarin and Kondogbia. Guarin didn't cover to Alonso and to any others on his side, and the same happened with Kondogbia: he should intercept or tackle the Ilicic's shot in the action of the second goal.
Little particular: have you seen how Kalicic flied to score the goal? Simply because of his condition, better than ours.
MANCINI: In the condition of 0-2 after 18' Mancini tried to change something defensively: he saw that our defense was suffering too much and he decided to renforce it sliding Perisic from the attack to the wide and Santon from the wide-back to the center. Defense with three defensor.
Little problem: Perisic isn't a wide and his defensive skills aren't as good as the offensive ones and wasn't a problem for Fiorentina's players attack from his side. Adding this to the fact that Santon can't play as central defensor because it's not his role and the 0-3 was easier than what expected.
0-3 after 23'. The 3-defensors system was a big mistake by Mancini that, if he really wanted to do it, should change Ranocchia or Juan for Palacio (at his age we should take him off this kind of matches).
THE LAST GIFT: Now, it was clear the match was finished after 23' but we decided to give another gift to them: the red card to Miranda. Playing in 10 players, after 30' meant that we could end the game in that moment because it was impossible for any team in the world to correct the match. Impossible because the Fiorentina put 10 players behind the line of the ball and because we don't have a physical condition acceptable in this moment (and this also explain the many matches won for 1-0). Yes, any team, including Barcellona that lost 1-4 against Celta Vigo: do you really think Celta Vigo is better than Barca? Of course not, but in this moment it's possible to see this kind of results.
THE FUTURE: Has the team that won 5 matches just disappeared? Of course not, we have done a suicide, but the future is clear. We must archive this match and trying to learn from this mistakes.
The "amazing soccer" of Fiorentina was a normal strategy on the pitch but it was helped by our fundamental mistakes. Without the mistakes by Handanovic, Guarin, Kondogbia, Perisic, Santon we will be able to take on this strategy, resist to it and defeat our oppositors. It's nothing special, but it isn't only if you don't score to yourself.

Sometime happes (c) Inter.it

The importance of being Felipe

Many things have happened since my last post (sorry, but my job has asked me for an additional work). It was the 19th of August and we had just sold Kovacic to Real Madrid; we were in the middle of a bad pre-season and a hard discussion about the confused ideas of Mancini (Too many new players? Too poor quality? Too little players? Too much money spent for Kondobgia? Will we be better than Milan or the new Napoli by Sarri? and so on...). 

Over the last 3, 4 weeks we have sold Hernanes as well, we have bought Perisic, Ljalic, Telles, Melo, and we have played and won the first three matches, we have understood that Mancini prefers everyone else to Ranocchia, and that Medel is a good player even if he should play as striker or goalkeeper.

Many bloggers and journalists have wrote about the new Inter, the different options Mancini has, and bla, bla, bla, but there is one particular point that I want to focus on. Now we are a team. Let me explain my idea of team.  

A team is composed by a group of people that use their abilities for achieving a goal. There are two opposite type of teams: the "Artistic with Creativity" ones and the "Strong with Personality" ones. Such as Atene and Sparta: both of them made the history even though they were completely different between them. If you prefer you could call this difference: Quality and Quantity.

The job of a leader is trying to create a team with some good components from both of these types, and it's exactly what Mancini tried to do in the last market session.

Last years we didn't have a bad team. We had artistic people such as Hernanes, Kovacic, Icardi, Palacio and others, and we also had strong people such as Juan, Medel, Guarin, and others. 

The problem was that on a scale rate from 1 (poor personality) to 10 (good personality) and 1(poor creativity) to 10 (good creativity) all of our players were around 5, the middle: no good artists, no good strong. They were the middle, in the average, in the mediocrity.

So, what did Mancini do last months? He bought players at the top of their abilities: Melo, Kondogbia, Murillo, Miranda (strong with personality) and Jovetic, Perisic, Ljalic (artistic with creativity). 

The results? Even players such as Juan, Guarin, Santon and Medel have took advantage from them. It's not been a case if Juan has played his best match since his arrival at Inter. It's not been a case if Medel has played better than Ranocchia or most of defensors in Italy. It's not been a case if Guarin has been finally crucial against Carpi (assist and penalty) and Milan (goal). 

Did they improve during the summer? No, they are improved thanks to the arrival of players with a strong personality. In particular Felipe Melo (top personality). Probably he has been the most important acquisition together with Jovetic (top creativity with good personality as well: the champion is the one that has a top creativity and a top personality, such as Messi or Ronaldo). 

Since his first match (the derby) he has put his strenght, his ambition, his anger, his ability to be the Boss of the midfield on the pitch. He came into the pitch with the eyes of the tiger, he knows what he wants, he wants to be the Boss and everyone will try to take him on will be cleaned away. 

His screams against Balotelli awoke his teammates: Juan, for example, was another person. The save against Luis Adriano was an action that seemed impossible for him until a couple of weeks ago (the problem of Juan has always been his concentration: he's a good defensor, but he's rarely concentrated for 90' and this brought him to make mistakes in positioning).

This is what Melo has brought to us: top personality (and also a bit of creativity). Melo and Jovetic are our real top players this year because this is what a top player does: he improves his teammates. Do you remember Luiz Rozario de Lima, called Ronaldo? He was the top player and thanks to him players as Taribo West and Francesco Moriero seemed top players as well. But they weren't. They were good only because of the presence of Ronaldo (and Simeone). 

So, let me paraphrase the title of a famous Oscar Wilde's book, because with a player such as Felipe Melo anything seems impossible. 

(c) Inter.it