Inter wins, Milan also lost confidence and enthusiasm

In Riyadh, Inter easily got the better of a horrendous Milan, plunged to the ground by a total lack of confidence and enthusiasm: they look like words from Chinese fortune cookies, in reality they represent the key to everything. The key, at least, to the 2022 Scudetto: a group that has gone beyond its limits through an attitude of a team on a mission, in the clouds, resisting hand-to-hand combat against a stronger Inter but weakened by the same virus that now afflicts the champions of Italy in charge.

There’s no need to go too far: let’s go back to the derby of last September 3, won with an even narrow 3-2. The most banal, yet revealing data, concerns the two goalkeepers Handanovic and Maignan, different from those of yesterday. It took Inzaghi two months to change the Slovenian with Onana and the move proved to be a panacea in numbers and in the game: the team relaxed their nerves (you will remember Barella’s constant tantrums between September and October, and he wasn’t the only ) and found conviction, with the feat in the Champions League as an exclamation point. Pioli, on the other hand, has lost the man who, for the writer, was the MVP of the 2021-2022 season: not only – trivially – because he is a goalkeeper who saves, but due to his status as a temperamental, technical leader (throws, unmarking passes, never trivial solutions to start the action), even tactical: remember when he advanced to midfield to prepare his teammates for a free-kick in attack? Having Maignan behind made Kalulu and Tomori much lighter, who above all could stand on the pitch a little taller, more intense, more aggressive: a little more confident. The chronic insecurity of the defence, unmasked by the frequent quarrels on the pitch between team mates, triggers a tremendous vicious circle: having Kalulu and Tomori in excellent psycho-physical conditions allows Theo Hernandez and Calabria to let loose the reins, allows the midfielders not to playing with the anxiety that a bad pass or individual distraction is sure to cause a goal opportunity, allows the team to think forward and not backward. The change of header is further fatal for a team that has built its results in the last two years on a strong risk coefficient: without ever administering a difficult and optimistic football, uneasy in the slow rhythms. We have arrived at the key word: optimism.

Thanks to Tatarusanu who, even if he doesn’t make mistakes, is still not Maignan (unfortunately for him, it’s a problem that is difficult to remedy), Milan had already started to creak in the autumn: even in the triumphant 4-0 win against Salzburg honest Romanian goalkeeper had been hit several times by the Austrian forwards, often arriving in the danger zone. The management did not want to or was able to remedy this discrete alarm signal: the friendlies in December re-presented the problem amplified by ten, so much so that in the disastrous Eindhoven test Pioli even proved the owner of the baby-pensioner Mirante (rejected with losses ). Milan had already gloomed in Salerno, winning “only” 2-1 in a match that was supposed to end 7-0, and definitively lost their optimism in the unfortunate final against Roma, where they saw two points in five go up in smoke blackout minutes. “We must regain lightness, we must regain enthusiasm,” Pioli has been repeating in vain for a week. But enthusiasm often tends to be confused with personality: Milan doesn’t have that much, with the exception of the old wolves like Giroud and Kjaer who, however, have been scratching the bottom of the barrel in recent weeks. By the way, do you know who has lots of them? Maignan.

So too Pioli, a man who in his career has never shown extraordinary skills as a navigator in the storm, begins to become irrelevant, as in that old Woody Allen film in which Robin Williams played out of focus. Yesterday in the 60th minute, against an almost encouraging start to the second half, he wanted to try his luck with the Origi curbstone and the wet chick De Ketelaere in place of Diaz (one of the least worst) and Messias, perhaps trying to repeat the script of Lecce, where he had caught her by the hair with long throws. But Inter is not Lecce. Little enthusiasm on his part too, forced by the game of roles to a constant distribution of blame starting from himself, in a tired and dragged litany that has already provided for the antiquated solution of the mini-retirement punishment after the Italian Cup, which I am follow the two worst performances of the season. He can’t find equally convincing tactical ideas that are alternatives to a game system that worked very well for two years but is now too conditioned by the waning moons of the best players: even in Rafa Leao, when things don’t work out, all his narcissism comes out. And now, what does the calendar foresee in sequence Lazio, Sassuolo and again Inter? Do you know who would be needed? It would take Maignan.

The smokescreen that Milan has been spreading for weeks around its goalkeeper’s injury is becoming increasingly surreal. To be honest, it’s a sad habit of almost all the strongest teams, which from Vlahovic to Lukaku have all had at least one illustrious fugitive this year. We don’t even know exactly what kind of relapse he had: let’s hope that at least this is clear in the secret rooms of Milanello, so as not to run the risk of playing with the red light on until May. Do these sound like exaggerated words? Instead, it seems broadly to us the same precarious situation that Liverpool usually experience when their column, Virgil Van Dijk, is missing: a single defender, of course, but essential not only for his immense value, but also for how he improves the performance of others with the mere presence on the pitch, even if half-service. Now he was hurt and will be out for over a month: and immediately the Reds, in which even a guru like Klopp is now faltering, sank 0-3 in Brighton. Whatever the most utopian coaches and lovers of sound bites say, footballers are not all the same.

Simone Inzaghi knows this well, who in the most difficult moment – ​​with an out of shape centre-forward, an invisible second striker and an almost 37-year-old champion who won’t be able to pull the cart for too long – is happily clinging to a 3-5-2 without screams and without major failures whose technical leader is a Lautaro Martinez regenerated from the World Cup: the power of a penalty missed by Tchouameni or a save by Dibu Martinez. Singular the comparison between him and the French Theo and Giroud, who theoretically broke away in Qatar on the same day and at the same time, but with slightly different final results: the umpteenth proof that the head moves everything, and even moves mountains. Milan 2021-2022 proved it for good, Milan 2023 is proving it for bad.