Sunday 30 October 2016

#PioliOut

It's been a terrible long while since I've last written a post here. There's not much to write about anyway. A few good goals from Icardi, a few games you could call football and that's just about it. The rest is just unnecessary drama and a continuance of turning Inter into a business club and steering it further and further away from being a football club. 
We're witnessing the last days of Frank De Boer's short time in charge of Inter. He's as good as gone after the defeat against Sampdoria, a mid-table team that completely outplayed us in every single aspect of the game for 60-70 minutes. The bad news for the sorry losers who blame our defeats on bad luck is that it's not that. It's not De Boer's lack of football knowledge either, to those that want to act as bigger experts in football than a man who's learned football at the best football academies in the world.

De Boer should leave Inter. Not because Inter will "get back to the good old ways" without him, but because of his own mental health and career prospects. I think he should quit, not wait around to be fired. Is De Boer the best coach in the world? He's not. He's not even "one of the best in the world", but then again it's not like we deserve a coach of such stature right now anyway. We haven't since Mourinho left, and ironically the reason we were one of the best in the world while we had one of the best in the world is Mourinho himself, who was the driving force of that club back then. He depleted everything he could and he left. But enough about him.

I wonder who would be willing to take up a football job at Inter right now, be it as a player or a coach. Inter have failed to qualify for the UEFA Champions League since 2011/12. They have changed ownership twice since 2010 and have had 0 football progress overall in that time. They've spoken of "projects" ever since, but have shown nothing to prove they're really developing one. They've hired and fired coach after coach, so many of them with diverse approaches to the job and the game itself. None of that resembles a "project" or any kind of long-term planning or vision. Inter have had 8 different coaches in 6 years since Mourinho. That's more than a coach per season. Let that sink in and tell me how you'd feel about accepting that job if you were a professional football manager. What sort of job security would you have? What sort of vision would you set up at a club you know would likely fire you before you could put all of it on paper?
The treble generation at Inter is gone and dusted. Zanetti is the only one sticking around as the club's vice president, and with all due respect to his legendary career as a player (by far my favorite one by the way), he's not handling being a bureaucrat very well. I consider it very irresponsible that he came out and said the club are considering stripping Icardi's armband in the wake of the "scandal" with Curva Nord, right before a game, which we later lost, with Icardi himself missing a penalty. We've got a president who said he likes Arsenal's example as a guiding star in his work. Arsenal, who haven't won a significant trophy in over 10 years. He's even a fan of theirs. The man hasn't said a single smart thing in football terms since he's taken over. I haven't seen a player smile heartfelt and with honesty while greeting him. Now there's a new group of influence - Suning. And Moratti is still pulling some strings, speaking more about Inter in public than the president himself, who is hardly ever around anyway and while his team's captain is being threatened by his ultras, he's out taking photos with unknown basketball players God knows where. So there's at least three identified spheres of influence, all pulling in more or less different directions.
Now imagine you're a player. You're a Montenegrin who used to play in Italy and made it bow down to you, your comeback would be welcomed with excitement. Or you're the heart of the Croatian national football team, running your heart out, scoring, assisting... Or you're from Kosovo, playing for Switzerland, and not feeling respected enough at Bayern, with a point to prove. Or you're a French guy who was picked in the team of the season in the UCL and decided to leave Monaco and find yourself a good club in Europe to take your career forward. You're a young Brazilian prodigy and the world is crazy for you. Juventus, Barcelona... a lot of the world's best clubs are after you. You decide to go to Inter, they pay huge money for you. You're fucked. You haven't even unpacked and you're on the bench. Why? Who knows. Maybe you're a fraud. Maybe the coach doesn't like the way you comb your hair. Maybe the coach is a fraud. Maybe you don't fit his ideas tactically but the management forced you on him. Maybe you're too young and aren't ready to face football in Europe, but you were presented as Jesus's second coming, so everyone expects you to be the solution to the world's problems, but the dumbass coach doesn't let you play. Who knows, right? Now, really, would you sign up to play for Inter? I know I wouldn't.
The only thing that's really tempting about accepting to be involved at Inter in the football part is the money. You hear these Chinese have a shitload of it and they're throwing it around. You'd be a fool not to take advantage of that. You're the kind of guy who doesn't give a fuck about football. Or you do, but you're nowhere near good enough to ever earn that kind of money, so you show football the middle finger and buy yourself a house in Milan, a good car, get some good-looking girl and forget about everything else. And you find that most of the people in your club are like that, so you become mates and have good parties, and whoever tries to pull you out of your mediocrity is a smart-ass and is shown his place.

Frank De Boer is a man of football in a club which is not a football club. He's no Johann Cruyff, but he's a man of football. He's grown up to respect the principles of Cruyff, Ajax, Barcelona. He's a bit overconfident and arrogant because he has a "philosophy", but he's there about the football. He goes to bed with it and wakes up with it, has principles, and if you don't follow them you're out of the team, because you don't want to commit yourself to it and that makes you unworthy of it.
And his philosophy might not be compatible with Inter, or with Italian football and culture in general. Maybe it's a bad idea to act like he's at Ajax while he's at Inter. But that wouldn't have been his decision in the first place if the guy who decided to hire him had a clue about football.
You might hate him for not playing Gabigol. I'd say he's probably right for not playing him, at least in his own philosophy. You were all ok when he isolated Kondogbia despite knowing his potential; you were all ok when he benched Perisic, despite seeing what he could do in our shirt last year. But now one young Brazilian guy most of you haven't even seen play goes on the bench and it's suddenly Armageddon. Why? Well, we had celebrations when he came around, what do you mean he's "not ready"?!

Inter's demise is so much deeper than everything we see. Because the failures since 2010 are so many, that we tend to forget about them. We tend to forget how we made a show off buying Kondogbia last year, because this year there's a new failure to keep us occupied (OMFG PLAY GABIGOL FDB OKAY WTF FDB?!?!?!). The club has become a joke, the likes of which are hardly seen in the world anymore. While Thohir makes his 130 million in interest. And those jackasses in the Curva remain "dedicated and loyal to the club" and they go and protest and threaten Icardi because he wrote a page in a book where he said he once thought they were morons, but was later very sorry about that. Icardi, one of the few players whose talent and commitment, despite all the glamour and Wanda-ing and showing off - has shone on and kept on emerging, coach after coach, year after year. Because apart from his off-field adventures, the man knows his football and he's dedicated to it. But the Curva think he's disloyal to the club and they won't follow him. The ones truly disloyal to the club are them, and the management that turned that club into this sorry monstrosity, this lame excuse of a football club. They don't protest against the management to stop toying with the club, to show loyalty to its history, and thus are disloyal to their "historic" role as guardians of the club.

A very smart man I follow on Twitter keeps saying "We get the club we deserve". I think tonight I finally comprehended what he means. I understood it before, but there was always something missing. Now I've got the final piece of the puzzle.

I will be taking a break off watching Inter in the coming period. Fuck this, enough. I've got healthier things to do than watch them underperform while being overpaid. I'm not proud of Inter being "pazza". It's a loser's mentality, a sorry excuse for faltering. We weren't "pazza" in 2010. We were strong, and dominant. Even when desperately holding off against Barcelona, we were dominating. Because we were in control, it's what we wanted to do. I was there game in-game out through the whole post 2010 crisis. I understood that they needed to start a new cycle, despite the fact the way they handled the whole situation was another public embarrassment (anyone remember Sneijder?)
I expected people to take a serious approach and unite in the respect for the club, start pulling forward again. But they haven't. And so they're undeserving of my support. I might be arrogant, I might be called disloyal. But I say true disloyalty is shown by those who can keep looking and support this and do nothing. Obviously I will occasionally follow what happens with the club. The moment I see that someone who loves the club and loves doing their job for its benefit takes the wheel - I'll be back too, singing my heart out, just like that magical night in 2010. "Grazie per i brividi in quella notte magica, Io ti giuro che saro sempre con te..."

Oh, and one more thing: #PioliOut 

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