Hussen Marhoon delivers his Tuesday editorial for SempreInter.com again. Nice read for you:
Who’s better, Branca or Oriali? This debate has been ongoing since the popular figure of Lele Oriali left Inter (or was forced to leave) back on 1st November 2010. Since that date, Inter’s transfer dealings have been appalling for most parts. Branca’s advocates will jump to his defense pointing out that since winning the treble back in 2010, he did not have the spending budget he once had back in the good old days and certainly the coaches merry-go-round since Mourinho’s departure was also a critical factor that affected his work. However, he did not help his case either as he went on to sign the likes of Diego Forlán (as Eto’o’s replacement) when he was already past it, Mauro Zárate, Angelo Palombo (as Thiago Motta’s replacement), Ricky Álvarez, Álvaro Pereira (although he was good for both Porto and Uruguay before he joined Inter), Jonathan, Andrea Ranocchia (paying 12.5m€ and giving away Mattia Destro), Matías Silvestre, Tommaso Rocchi and Ezequiel Schelotto to name a few.
(Ousted) Gabriele ‘Lele’ Oriali enjoyed an illustrious career at Inter. The combative midfielder started with Nerazzurri’s youth team as a teenager in 1966 and got promoted to the first team in 1970 as he was part of Inter’s Scudetto winning side of 1970/1971 on his debut season. He became a popular figure for his heroic displays especially in the Milano derbies. Lele ended his career with Inter as a player in 1983, a career that saw him win 2 Scudetti and 2 Coppe Italia and make a total number of appearances of 392 matches in which he scored 43 goals.
Lele came back to Inter as a football director in 1999, a time when the club had world class superstars such as Christian Vieri, Roberto Baggio, Iván Zamorano, Álvaro Recoba and Ronaldo, but it was also a time when the club was hugely underachieving in terms of results. He was entrusted to run the transfer market affairs in the following seasons, however, the results on the pitch did not improve.
In his initial period as a football director, Oriali made so many infamous deals like signing the likes of Antonio Pacheco, Gonzalo Sorondo, Jérémie Bréchet, Vratislav Greško, Dominico Morfeo, Carlos Gamarra, Thomas Helveg, Cyril Domoraud and sorely exchanging Clarence Seedorf and Andrea Pirlo for Guly and Francesco Coco with cross city arch rivals Milan.
After failing to make the required impact, Inter brought in another former player in Marco Branca to aid Lele Oriali and although the partnership did not seem very effective at the beginning, it grew to become as one of the most formidable duos especially after the Calciopoli scandal.
During the Branca and Oriali era, Inter managed to sign Stanković from Lazio for 4m€ (plus the co-ownership of Pandev), Júlio César from Flamengo for as little as 2.6m€, Samuel from Real Madrid for 18m€, Hernán Crespo and Juan Verón from Chelsea for free (two seasons on loan), they also signed Ibrahimović for 24.8m€ from demoted Juventus in the summer of 2006 and then sold him to Barcelona for 49.5m€ plus Samuel Eto’o (valued at that time at 20m€), Maicon from Monaco for 7m€, Lúcio from Bayern for 7m€, resigning Goran Pandev for free, and last but not least Thiago Motta for 10m€ and Diego Milito for 25m€. That period saw the club collect a Champions League, a Clubs World Cup, 5 Scudetti, 3 Coppe Italia, and 3 Supercoppe Italiane.
To bring things about, the figures and the trophies speak for themselves. Branca and Oriali were great when they worked together, not so when they worked on their own. Calls to sack Branca and reappoint Oriali cannot be justified because of Lele’s dismal record as a director prior to Branca’s arrival at Inter and they can only be seen as a ‘stress relief’ stemming out of the fans’ frustrations because of results on the pitch and also because of the club’s bad business in transfer market in the last two seasons.