Looking back, the battle between coaches during the early stages of the season for Inter. Today Gazzetta dello Sport compares the first 11 days of this season and the last, with Frank De Boer and Luciano Spalletti. An outstanding difference: only 14 points for the Dutch man – placing his Inter in 11th after Genoa (on level with Sampdoria), in comparison to the 29 points gathered by the Italian. Despite this, there have been a few changes to the squad (Gagliardini, Skriniar, Borja Valero and Vecino) over the year.
So where’s the difference? The rosea paper tries to answer this: “Beyond the numbers, there is a visible decrease in anxiety in the team’s play which allows them to play with calmness. Spalletti, along with his staff are continuing to reinforce the groups confidence and harmony that these players have been lacking after a bad season. For example, when you see Samir Handanovic playing the ball from the back and offering an escape for his defenders, there is legitimate cause to why wonder why this is. The belief is that it’s because it grants security to everyone, it shows confidence (although there can be odd moments of panic, as shown against Verona) and because doing so forces your opponent to come out of position. In favour of Spalletti, the defence is almost the same with only the new edition of Skriniar in place of Jeison Murillo. By lowering anxiety, Luciano is allowed to work to the maximum.”
The numbers say that Inter have scored more (22-13) and also conceded less (8-14) in comparison to a year ago. Furthermore, there’s been less shots on our goal (168-185) and more shots taken by our forwards (145-112). However these numbers should not be interpreted for what they are exactly, since there are variable circumstances, such as the amount of long range shots in contrast to how many were taken within the box.
This years performances have also been improved on an individual basis with Candreva and even Nagatomo putting in better shifts.
