Inter was born on the 9th of March 1908 and 106 years later we play another Serie A fixture, this time against Torino on a sunny San Siro. Both Inter and Torino came to the match with suspensions in the defence. Would the defences hold for Palacio-Icardi and Cerci-Immobile? Or we would see a another goal glutted match between the teams?
Inter began the match with high pressure and showed that they want to be at the top of the league, the beforehand shaky defence acted safely on the few chances that Torino tried to create, the midfield which contained the genius Cambiasso with intelligent Hernanes and the reborn Guarin put high pressure and kept the ball within the team and tried to find through balls down the middle to the strikers where Palacio and Icardi tried to find space in the penalty area, where Torino also had “parked the bus”. Nagatomo and Jonathan on the flanks could concentrate on attacking but both gave poor performances, Nagatomo tried to repeatedly twist and turn to find a cross but ended up with a backward pass instead of crossing the ball early to our two running strikers.
Jonathan didn’t make a difference and he played one sideway pass after another, and those few times he made a cross, it was very sloppy. Guarins has through his inconsistency found back to his “old self ” as he can do something brilliant in one instance only to follow it up with an awful pass the following moment which is aimed to a Hernanes who’s standing only three feet away from him. Hernanes seems to be the prophet we want him to be and I hope Cambiasso can extended his contract so that we can enjoy his intelligence for another year.
Despite a low tempo a goal did hang in the air for Inter who had 64% ball-possession in the first half despite not having created so many scoring opportunities, but that way we saw little bit of what Inter used to do four to five years ago, as the team grinded down the opposition. Palacio was close to finding the net with a header from a cross by Guarin but the keeper made a good save, but after 30 minutes of play Cambiasso made a delicate pass into a running Palacio who could head the ball into the net in a difficult position. In that sequence, you could see how good Palacio-Icardi actually cooperate as Icardis run against the first post opened up for his attacking colleague. We continued to control the match after the goal and Torino were taken off the situation and only created two corners after Cerci got a long pass to work on the right wing.
The question was whether we would see an Inter who would focus on defending or one where the team would continue to go for a second goal. Well in the second-half Torino started playing higher up the pitch, both Immobile and Cerci got more balls to work with and that created a feeling from something we have learned during the last years, Inter would probably screw this up. Inter didn’t quite find their positions in defence at the beginning and Cuchu often had to act like a cleaning man in front of the defence, Guarin disappeared completely from the game and didn’t return. Then came the substitutions that many wanted to see, Kovacic entered, Guarin went off and Inter began to lift up their positions again. Unfortunately we didn’t control the game like in the first half, but Kovacic made a few runs with the ball that you just love to see him do, however, we also saw that he is not fully developed in the defensive aspect when he tried to go up and steal the ball from the player but missed and then not complete his run to help rest of the team, something Mazzarri has spoken clearly of and which is the main difference between him and Guarin, where Guarin holds his defensive position. I guess that is why he plays ahead of the young Croatian.
Without that we actually didn’t concede any dangerous chances besides the two shots that Handanovic saved, but we didn’t create so much going forward either and we were able to hold on to our lead and take three crucial points in the race for a European spot. This doesn’t seem impossible as Mazzarri seems to have found a way back to a strong defensce again.