Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season
so berlusconi eventually found his personal hitman!
gerd said:
Will Benitez eat his panettone?
LOL! how do u know about that italian saying Gerd? guardian podcast?
anyway yes, people in italy are starting to raise this question.... especially after moratti's post derby interview. i'm quite sure rafa will stay until jannuary at least...... and i'm inclined to believe benitez won't get the sack this season..... unless he keeps going like that for the next 2 months..... if benitez won't actually have this inter team playing football in 2 months, then the situation might be different and moratti might start looking for some alternatives (spalletti? gasperini?).
rafa has some justifications... this team is probably close to the end of a cycle.... the treble obviously has a killer effect on motivation, and it's always tricky to handle the aftermath of the departure of a very "stressing" coach like mourinho.... and then there are the injuries to take into account.....
but even taking into account all theese factors, rafa still has been extremely disappointing so far.
yeah the motivational aspect might be a problem.... but not that much.... let's not forget that this inter team, as some of the greatest professionals in football. people like zanetti, eto'ò, samuel, milito, snejder... they don't need a coach to motivate them.... so i'm less inclined to believe that's a real problem..... and more inclined to believe they still don't know what the coach expects from them (but that's just an assumption).
and the injuries too are a pretty lame excuse..... i mean yeah there are lots of injured players, but in the last 2 months (8 matches) inter won just twice.... they scored 5 goals and they conceded 5.... 10 points in 8 matches.... that's almost a relegation zone ratio..... and no matter how many injuries inter had to deal with, they still can line up a competitive starting 11, so that just can't be a valid excuse for such a poor display.
juventus too had lots of injuries...... yet they delivered much better than that. and juve had also another huge handicap: they have a completely renewed squad... the players are still getting to know each others.... they're still learning del neri's football...... but they actually ARE learning... u can see juventus is getting each and every week closer to del neri's kinda team... they're starting to play del neri's football....
what about inter? can u recognize any sort of path... any sort of gameplan in this inter? coz i really can't. i just can't figure out what sort of football inter plays.... everything it's so random. it's almost like watching last season's liverpool! how can u turn such a great machine like inter into this!? i'm obviously aware that every newcoming coach has pretty much to restart from scratch..... but this is worse than starting from scratch.
no one expected rafa to have an instant impact or to keep this inter on the same path they were on last season...... but we're in november, and by now we should be seeing some progresses.... i'm not saying we should already be able to see "rafa's inter".... but we definitely should be able at least to tell what tactical path rafa decided to took... what kind of football he's aiming to... and right now we can't even tell that.
i think moratti will give rafa at the very least 2 more months to actually do something and sort this team out..... but if by jannuary inter hasn't started playing football, well....
milanista said:
By the way, what did you guys think of the laissez faire approach by the referee? The Juve-Roma game was also quite free. I noticed that when a ref is like this on the get go, players know better not to dive about, leaving long periods of open play without stopping. I personally thought it was great!
i prefere this kind of approach too.
rfu said:
very impressed with what i've seen from Pastore of late, very very impressed. That attacking trident with Miccoli and Illicic is coming along very nicely. Ben, could you comment on detail on Palermo 4-3-2-1 formation? I wonder if Inter could implement something similar as there is a genuine lack in quality attacking wide players.
yeah inter looks extremely narrowed lately. however palermo's width doesn't come from the trident. pinilla, ilicic, pastore, hernandez, miccoli, they don't give many benchmarks, but they don't even stay wide. the fullbacks are the ones who provide us width. they keep banging on both sides, creating some spaces for the upfront trio and for the central midfielder runs (bacinovic and nocerino especially).
it's very hard to stretch the pitch horizontally in the 3\4. the only coach who tries this sort of approach is del neri. it's much more easy to do it at midfield, with your fullbacks. sidebacks don't usually have to deal with the same tight marking offensive players have to deal with. so have them overlapping, tell them not to cut on the inside and that'll give your midfield and strikers some room to work with.... but of course u need fullbacks who can do that... mAicon certainly could... i'm not so sure about the other side.... if you're looking for width, u need both fullbacks to push... otherwise u're just shifting the center of gravity of the team on one side (and that won't give u any width at all).
i think that, with a good leftback and a little more quality at midfield, inter might actually implement something similar to palermo's system.... but we don't know if that's what rafa is aiming to...... and we also still don't know if rafa can do that...let's not forget delio rossi is a pretty good coach!
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some very nice matches this week. actually each and every week there are at least 3 or 4 potentially great matches.... but i got to say i was a bit disappointed by the football played by some teams in the last few weeks (especially napoli, cagliari and samp). this week instead was everything but disappointing. the juve roma match was absolutely great. roma was simply amazing.... i think ranieri got back in control of the dressing room, and now roma is officially back! however, even though roma pretty much dictated the plot of the game, juventus was almost as good as roma.... of course we can't expect that much from them (coz of all those injuries), but like i said before, juventus has a very definite football imprinting now. u can already see glimpses of del neri's football and that's great.... i'm telling u, after the winter pause, once del neri will have 2 more weeks to hold tactical training sessions, without having to worry about upcoming matches or injured players, juventus will be a machine!
the sicilian derby was very entertaining aswell. both teams didn't really play their real best football, coz obviously there was too much pressure on the players on both sides..... but still the quality of the football was very good and the intensity and the pace were exactly as high as u would expect in a derby.
i gotta say i really liked catania... they weren't as bad as the result might suggest.... i can already see giampaolo's touch on his new team... speaking of giampaolo, this men is a machine. he's coached 3 teams in the last 3 years (cagliari, siena and catania) and wherever he went he had his teams playing some good football. respect!
PLF said:
I missed the other games but watched 2nd half of the Sicilian derby!! Oh man!! F'n AMAZING stuff!! Anybody who's not a fan of Serie A like a lot of the British population who regularly use stupid cliches like "Serie A - Italian football boring or slow.... " should watch that! lol Crazy!! And yes Balzaretti might be doping or something lool... fucker was running incredibly fast (he seems faster than Juve days) in 92nd minute!!
Ilicic kid impressive but seems very reliant on his left-foot and left-foot alone but I haven't seen enough of him yet to say this with certainty.
and that wasn't even a stand out performance from palermo (neither from balzaretti)... we've actually played even better than that lately.
as for ilicic, you're right, when he came in palermo (3 months ago) he couldn't use his right foot at all. rossi is working on that. he gave ilicic a "brace" to apply to his left foot during training sessions.... specifically to force him to use his right foot. ilicic is enthusiast about this method and he says that his right foot touch has already improved...... to be honest, i still can't see such an improvement, but i guess it's gonna take some time.
and finally the milano derby was pretty good aswell. like i said last week, allegri is really leaving his mark on this milan..... and i like what i'm seeing!
ale: awesome avatar bro!!! ponte...stretto...messinaa!
Going on past experience, you really thing Moratti would let something like that happen?
where the hell is our width going to come from? Eto'o alone? If a clueless winger like Abate can start a derby as a side back, why the hell can't Santon?
). Neither can pass more than 5 meters in a straight line so what can Benito do? Oh and did I mention we have an aging squad well passed its peak? 
fair enough. point taken 