Inter, Zenga on Radu: “If there is no protection, ball forward on the tip”

From legendary goalkeeper to globetrotting coach. Walter Zenga has always stood out for his moral as well as technical qualities: a man of great personality, never banal in his expressions. And this time too he doesn’t mince words to analyze what happened to Radu in Bologna. But this time the construction from below has nothing to do with it. “If we want to analyze things from a tactical point of view, there is a serious conceptual error. And I think that Inzaghi also agrees. At that moment the ball had to be played in a different way: Perisic has a long throw, he too knows. that five meters from the flag, in the defensive phase, with the opponent under pressure coupled well in one on one, that ball must go high towards the tip. Then if it loses, we are already in good shape to defend ourselves. Stop “.

“It is obvious that Radu’s mistake is obvious. But it is the concept that is wrong from the beginning. Too easy to blame everyone on Radu. Shall we blame the weakest? And then sorry, but what does the comparison with Sarti have to do with it? Sarti made a goalkeeper mistake, missed a hold in the last game: there are four more games here, if Inter loses the Scudetto it will certainly not have been Radu’s fault … “.

But isn’t there an abuse of the goalkeeper’s involvement?

“Liverpool have scored several goals with Alisson going directly to look for Salah, City the same, with Ederson looking beyond the space Mahrez or Sterling. Maignan has a 60/70 meter kick with which he can operate Leao, as in the goal against Sampdoria. When I was coaching Sampdoria I had Viviano, who with his left-handed went directly to Eder and Muriel beyond the defender line. The idea of ​​exploiting the quality of the goalkeeper with his feet is right if done when needed: the concept of Basso in modern football is very valid because – as De Zerbi says – I play backwards to make others come forward and take advantage of the spaces. There are situations, however, to read carefully, and not doing so is much more serious than the mistake of an individual. Often the goalkeeper is put in a position to be pressed and not be able to play with serenity: he is not used to being immediately under pressure as a defender or a halfback “.

But how important is it for coach Zenga to have a good goalkeeper with his feet?

“I’m speaking as a goalkeeper: if we must necessarily look for a goalkeeper who knows how to play the ball well, then let’s go Brozovic: against Bologna, for example, Radu didn’t have to make a save, not even an exit …”.

But has such a mistake ever happened to you?

“I found myself on horseback with the introduction of the new rule on the back pass. The first summer we played a friendly match in Livorno, on a cincischiai back pass, the attacker was quicker than me, he took the ball away from me and scored a goal. From the time after … “pam”, platters towards the tip and away, and I solved my problems. Today the evolution of football has taken us to another dimension, but a coach always wants to have a goalkeeper who saves and a defender who defends. This first of all “.

Now how does Radu help himself now?

“I don’t know if Handa is back on Sunday, but in the meantime I have seen important things: Dumfries covering the camera, Dimarco, Correa and Cordaz cheering him up and I’m sure that
everyone – and I stress everyone – in the locker room did it. If he plays in Udine, he will have to have the strength to reset everything and start from scratch. If he had played the match of his life in Bologna, it’s not like he could go out on the pitch thinking “I’m a phenomenon”, because the mistake is just around the corner. In the same way, now he must not think he is the poorest, a mistake has happened to everyone. It is not important how many times you fall but how many times you get up. Demonstrating that you have personality is the most important thing in today’s world. ”