Juve, Napoli, Milan, Atletico and now Liverpool: Chivu’s team has never won a big match since the start of the season. Actually, worse: he lost them all. Thus it becomes difficult to take off definitively
The final encirclement of the German referee Zwayer for his cheerful invention of a few minutes earlier, complete with Lautaro desperate and throwing his arms around and Kolarov booked in the mix, is amply justified, but the real Inter was almost never seen against Liverpool, even before the casus belli: the Reds are nowhere near the diabolical machine of last season, but even Inter did not have the same boldness as last Saturday, apart from their size rival lower. The penalty kindly given to Szoboszlai poisoned the Champions League super-challenge and changed the perspective, as well as the result, but in the end, for once more, Chivu’s Nerazzurri finished a big match with a handful of buzzing flies in their hands. This one hurt even more than the others to the 75,000 at San Siro who marched disappointed, precisely because of the referee’s ax, but there must also be a deeper reason if, in five matches against opponents of the same lineage, Chivu’s team never finished with even a single point in their shopping bag. The Italian path was accompanied by the European one, the failures in Serie A were joined by those in the Champions League, and here comes the big question mark of the season: the Nerazzurri cannot think of being winners if they cannot also dominate in direct clashes.
the trouble
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Getting a full trophy against the small teams is a good thing, but to lift trophies the decisive leap is needed on the enchanting nights, those where the legs tremble the most. Strange but true, it is in these moments that clarity seems to decrease in decisive plays and the usual ferocity disappears at the moment of the jab: the psychological block was evident, perhaps more than other times, in the first half hour which was also hampered by injuries to Calhanoglu and Acerbi (the two different substitutions inevitably affected the entire development of the plot). Yet, since Slot’s men didn’t fire the cannon either, there was space and time to hurt the reds.
and now?
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Without that strange call from Zwayer to the VAR, the Nerazzurri would probably have snatched the first draw in the direct clash. In this Champions League so different from the last one, as soon as the level of the clash rose, we scraped our knees: after the first 12 points against less noble opponents, came the Metropolitano’s fall in the last corner against Atletico Madrid and this other full of regrets against Slot’s Reds. Previously, in Serie A, there had come a trio of defeats against the other big teams in the league: first the disappointing performance at the Stadium against Tudor’s then Juventus, then Chivu’s team ended up hand and foot in the Conti trap in Naples and, finally, the painful derby, well played but to the detriment of Pulisic. Connecting the dots, the situation becomes more complicated and in just over a week the first trophy of the season will be played for: Napoli and Milan are also arriving in Riyadh, two big names, it’s better to remember that. In the Champions League, then, there is one qualification still to be secured and in the last two days the Nerazzurri will have to face first Arsenal and then Borussia Dortmund.
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