Inter, Inzaghi six victories in a row: confirmation is closer

In Salerno in the most difficult moment, the Friday before Easter and Lisbon, Simone Inzaghi came up with a concept that is sometimes abused in sport: resilience. Never word was more apt. Three days later, in the Da Luz press room, he added: “The key word is together.” He didn’t speak at random, the coach. He glimpsed, precisely in the hours in which his bench was wobbling – and of course he was wobbling, Inter would have sacked him if he hadn’t been faced with such a compressed calendar – the possibility of coming out on top. He sensed the street, where almost everyone bumped into the walls. A month later Inzaghi is there, tremendously tempted to open the Istanbul guide to begin to settle in. But then no, superstition still has a value. Resilience, however, even more so. “We plugged our ears,” he said several times. Criticism on one side, work on the other: number 2 came out on the ticket. Call it Inzaghi’s spring, call it that. And now not only the bench no longer wobbles. Now it is also right to think about a longer deadline. What certainly seemed like a farewell at the end of the season is now a completely changed scenario. And the coach is “doing” the game: he is the one who holds his fate in his hands, he is the one who rewrote his story, he is the one who is betting on his stay today.

And it couldn’t be otherwise, with a Champions League final at hand. We are in the middle of a trap called Milan, because this was (still is) the semi-final of the Champions League. And half of it was completed to perfection. We are in a golden period: six consecutive victories which would later be seven, because the 3-3 draw at home with Benfica was a draw only for the statistics. Only two other times this season Inter had managed to put together an identical series: in the first came the passage of the group in the Champions League, in the second the Riyadh Super Cup. In this strand the team has put a mortgage on all of Turkey and has rearranged the standings with a view to fourth place. In four games he earned 10 points over Roma, 9 over Lazio and 4 over Milan. And Inzaghi has no desire to stop.

Yes, because the bar must be kept high. The coach spoke to the team after the first leg with Milan. And he asked to target second place. The attack on the position immediately behind Napoli would give another color to the championship, even if it changes little in substance compared to fourth place. But when you run, it usually works like this: you get addicted. The relationship with successes is now back on a daily basis, stable, not as annoyingly fluctuating as it was up to a month ago. Inter have discovered the meaning of the word “together”. All the Nerazzurri components, from Zhang – who kept the coach in contact with the managers after the internal knockout with Monza – up to the players who have found their motivation even in the face of less fascinating matches and goals.

How did the coach do it? Physically recovering Brozovic and Lukaku. The first effectively allowed the three midfielders who dragged the team along throughout the season to rest in turn, namely Barella, Calhanoglu and Mkhitaryan. The second instead allowed Dzeko and Lautaro, the two clearly ahead in the hierarchies, to pull the plug every now and then so as to find the best condition. The second step was even more extensive. Inzaghi rotated all available resources. The turnover was scientific, studied at the table. And he physically brought a squad to the top in mid-May: today Inter are flying, as if they had an edge over the engine of the others. And the route is so lucky that it won’t be abandoned now. Tuesday is the return against Milan and therefore today with Sassuolo it is reasonable to expect many changes in formation. How many? Otto, according to the indications of the day before. From the goalkeeper to the center forward, everything changes as long as the result doesn’t change. The second square is a concrete goal. And to think that there were those, like Max Allegri, who just 17 days ago imagined sixth place for Inter…