Inter déjà vu
Why are we even surprised by Stefano Pioli’s sudden dismissal? Inter have been doing this for decades, writes Susy Campanale.

Some people are doomed to make the same mistakes over and over again, never learning from the errors, while everyone around them can spot the pattern a mile away. Maybe Inter need therapy. Stefano Pioli was sacked on Tuesday night with a statement completely out of the blue, released coincidentally five minutes before the end of the Juventus Champions League semi-final with Monaco. Burying bad news when something else big is guaranteed to dominate the news cycle. Nice try, Suning.

Those of you who are relatively new to Italian football might think this is a recent development, but I can assure you that Inter have been self-destructing on a regular basis for years, even decades. We used to think it was Massimo Moratti’s benevolent but incompetent gestation, but Erick Thohir and now Suning Group are doing no better. There’s something in the water at Appiano Gentile and it’s poisonous.

When Stefano Pioli was giving his interviews to the media after a 1-0 defeat to Genoa, many of us were struck by a sense of déjà vu. Had we not seen pretty much the same process with Roberto Mancini, Walter Mazzarri, even Marcello Lippi? Start strong and full of confidence, title talk emerges, then at the first sign of difficulty there is a complete and total collapse. Everyone is out for themselves, all unity is abandoned and rats flee a sinking ship – or get flung off it.

You constantly get the impression nobody at Inter is really in charge. The owners are on the other side of the world. Javier Zanetti is a largely ceremonial figure. Piero Ausilio has publicly backed the last four Coaches just days before they were dismissed, so clearly nobody is listening to him. The tactician has zero authority with his players when they know full well he’s on the chopping block every week.

There at least used to be a leader on the pitch – Zanetti – but he’s retired and nobody is filling those shoes. Mauro Icardi is the captain, one of the youngest players in the squad and not a natural leadership figure. The rest of the side chops and changes so much, you can’t rely on anyone to be a reference point for the rest of his teammates. Samir Handanovic is the only one who seems to genuinely care and he’s finally starting to realise that he’s wasting his career with this club.

Pioli had no chance. Nobody does. The only reasons Jose Mourinho steered Inter to success were a) he fully embraced their persecution complex to create a siege mentality and b) his defend and counter tactics were still effective. Mou knew when to get out, too. That’s another skill he appears to have lost recently.

If the latest rumours are true, that Suning are hiring Walter Sabatini as their technical director and therefore Luciano Spalletti as next season’s Coach, it would mean Inter trying to create a winning mentality by bringing in people from Roma. You know, Roma, the other Italian club famous for choking when close to success, of churning through endless tacticians and constantly changing the squad so there’s no real plan.

Maybe it’s all some masterwork of physics where two negatives make a positive, so combining Inter and Roma will create this quantum singularity inverting their usual characteristics to spark the opposite effect? Or it could be the biggest supernova of failure we’ve ever seen in Serie A.

Either way, this will not be dull. Get the popcorn.
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