stefano pioli

“From the outside, the negative results made you think of a difficult environment. But now that I’m here we have everything in order to do our job and to do it well.”

These are words from Stefano Pioli, interviewed by Gazzetta dello Sport a few hours before the last mission of 2016 where he will face his ex-team Lazio.

What can we expect from January’s mercato? “To have less players, especially in the offensive phase. Without the Europa League an ideal roster would be 23-24 guys. It will be a transitional mercato, for everybody. I think that in January there are only certain values that can change. In June, on the other hand, we will instead prepare for more important things. The Inter fans can be calm, Suning Group really has the ambition to make Inter great again. I see a lot of passion here.”

So, no player coming in now? “Something will happen, but remember that our hands are tied by the FIFA Financial Fair Play rule.”

Does this team has leaders on the pitch? Sometimes it seems to lose personality… “The leader must become the game. With that said, there are players with a lot of personality, starting with Handanovic who, despite his position, is involved a lot. Then we have Icardi and also Miranda who now is starting to talk more and more on the pitch.”

How much is Icardi involved in your ideas of soccer? “You guys judge him from the amount of goals he scores. In Reggio (Emilia, against Sassuolo) I think he led by example, worked a lot for the team. I think he can focus more on his movement, allowing us to not only play in depth. When Candreva scored his goal it was thanks to Icardi and Joao Mario who both did their job. So, Icardi is doing a very important job. Of course the main task of an attacker is to score goals, but only if they sacrifice themselves can the team get the results we want and they all understand that, especially Mauro.”

What happened with Jovetic? “Nothing, during a face-to-face he expressed som discontent for some of the choices. I call up the players that are ready, in every sense…”

Perisic, on the wing, seems almost listless and apathetic from time to time, is that true? “I’m sorry that you feel that way. Ivan always gives his best, works hard and is also a really nice guy. I really rely on him a lot, he has the qualities of a phenomenon, it’s hard to find players that are so good with both their feet.”

Will we see Gabigol again? “He’s working hard, but so is the rest of the team. He still has to adapt to the Italian world and he still has to prove he is stronger than the competition. That’s all there is, I call up the players that make us win.”

Any particular games you didn’t like what you saw? “Hapoel and Napoli. In Israel things happened, thing that shouldn’t happen again. I sensed something during half-time, a few misplaced smiles, something that came from me asking of the result in the other game. The collapse in that second half was a good lesson for us. In Naples we played our worst game, I was furious and that was a terrible approach.”

Do you still believe in reaching that third place? “Of course, we are Inter. We have to believe, also because we have a lot of room for enormous improvement. I’m excited to see on what level we finally can perform”

How do you continue with Zhang Jr? “Steven is a smart guy, educated and above all curious. He is always with us and we talk soccer as we do with the CEO Liu Jun. In the past I have had owners who were absent the entire week, then gave me a call on Saturday asking me about the line-up. Here, not only do they ask, they follow the team and that’s it.”

How much is Candreva improving at the moment? “I never doubted the status of our relationship, despite what happened in Rome. I knew he wanted to prove he can stay at this level and if he manages to maintain focus with some sort of continuity he will become a top player.”

Do you think Brozovic tends to get lost a bit during matches? “Marcelo is outstanding, he always wants to play, just look at his intensity and how much he runs during games. The only thing could be that he gets too passionate at times and wastes energy.”

Is Pinamonti the future? “I think he is the best attacker in the new generation. He has technical and moral values that a kid in his age rarely has. I want him in the first team now, he can help us a lot from now to the end of the season. This is one of the reasons that I asked management to reduce the attackers in January.”‘

If you had 100 million of euros to spend during the summer, how would you spend them? “I would prefer to spend 30 million on three players each, one for each part (defence, midfeld and attack), rather than spending it all on one player. It doesn’t take that much to take us back to the top.”

Does it bother you to hear of Simeone as your successor from July 1st 2017? “Do you know what I think? Nothing, I honestly don’t care. When I was coaching Lazio I heard the same things. “One day I will coach Lazio…”, “We currently are pursuing…”

Source: gazzetta.it