- Joined
- May 25, 2005
- Messages
- 3,925
- Reaction score
- 185
- Location
- India
- Fav. Players
- Maldini, Keane, Laudrup, Cannavaro, Gattuso, Ronaldo, ABD , Virender Sehwag
If Inter were telling the truth when they said they took Uefa's fairplay rules seriously and sold Eto'o so that they don't become an offender, I respect it. But as with most of their dealings, they don't apply this good sense across the board to all their sectors. What the thinking was in hiring Gasperini when they knew fairly for certain he played a 3-4-3 and was loath to change it, I can't fathom. On the one hand you have owners like Steve Gibson, who gives five years to an absolute cretin like Gareth Southgate at Middlesbrough, just because he's been given the job, and have Moratti and Abramovich on the other, who sack and change at a whim.
Even Abramovich gives almost everything a coach asks for -- funds for players, a free hand as long as the team is in sights of winning the CL, and a very big paycheck -- in return for his pound of flesh, the Champions League. But Moratti wants power and glory without the responsibility attached to it, and that's a shame for such a huge club.
There was a very good article on Gasperini on Guardian a while back by Jonathan Wilson.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/sep/15/gian-piero-gasperini-internazionale-inter
Benitez's effect on this Inter squad reminds me of the effect Sam Allardyce had on Newcastle players during his short stint at the club. He was Freddy Shepherd's last appointment as manager before he sold the club to Mike Ashley and Allardyce brought in his usual battery of teams, sports scientists, navel watchers, the works... except the football.
Two years after his dismissal, people were still talking about 'recovering' from the Allardyce Effect. It may have been an exaggeration, but Benitez, however offending his football may be, was a victim of Moratti's petulant running of the club.
I really do think the likes of Moratti and Abramovich read, and believe, media reports of their 'ruthless' culling of coaches, regardless of the cost involved, when results take a nosedive. I think it gives them a powertrip. They're the shining knights of armour coming to the rescue of a club in the throes of collapse by banishing the offender (the coach) to the ends of the world, regardless of the millions of dollars in cost involved. Somebody should tell them they're ruining the club. Offending the fans, deceiving them, and they're a disgrace to the sport.
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