After the gutting draw to Milan on Wednesday, the Nerazzurri travelled to Turin hoping to get back on track with three points in order to maintain their push for football in Europe’s elite competition next season. This would be no easy feat however since Torino completely flipped their form with two wins in a row, scoring eight goals in the process whilst only conceding a single goal. Those results came after four straight defeats so the Toro will be in top form for this match.
Formations:
I predicted after the derby that Spalletti would make a couple of changes but instead he opted to only make one with Rafinha (who is lacking overall fitness as we all know) being dropped for Borja Valero who has only been coming on as a substitute of late. Everything else remained the same and you can understand why since the team is playing with confidence and one midweek fixture shouldn’t be too much of a problem, especially if/when we compete in Europe next season. The players will have to get used to that.
Since former Inter manager, Walter Mazzarri switched to a 3 at the back, Torino’s form has changed completely so it was no surprise to see that system kept in place. Only two adjustments were made to the side that beat Crotone 4-1 with former Inter youth product, Joel Obi replacing Tomás Rincón in the midfield and summer arrival, Nicolas Nkoulou taking the place of Kevin Bonifazi.
First Half:
The match got off to a fast start with Torino applying immense pressure from the get go, forcing the away side into making multiple mistakes. Something teams like Milan and Hellas Verona failed to do in recent fixtures. When teams press like Torino did in the opening minutes, players must understand which positions to take up and how to actually play out under pressure. This is something Inter struggle with for the most part and that was shown here.
Handanović receives the ball here and every short option is being cut off so he has to either be skilled enough to dink the ball to Miranda for example which is very risky or boot the ball long to not bring further danger to the side.
The option he chose was to pass it short to Škriniar who is fantastic on the ball but even the world’s best would struggle in this situation. He actually managed to find Cancelo but then the ball was lost with Torino winning possession in Inter’s final third. Poor decision making.
Torino’s use of their wingbacks and forward players was very well worked in the first half with their positional and situational awareness being superb. If someone deep had the ball, Iago Falque or Ljajić would be in the half space, ready to run away from the goal thus dragging ideally the fullback out of position allowing a wingback to then exploit the space in behind. An example of this was in the 24th minute when Iago Falque and De Silvestri worked this sort of move to perfection.
As you can see, Nkoulou is the person who is carrying the ball deep. This is a trigger for Iago Falque and De Silvestri to make their moves and that is shown with the direction of the arrows. The Spaniard runs towards the ball dragging D’Ambrosio out of his position and since Perišić lacks the defensive awareness, his man is allowed to just drift freely into space with Belotti ready to pounce. You should note how when this move starts, Belotti is offside. That is done deliberately as he knows where the ball is going to end up and he wants to be ahead of the defenders for a ball to arrive into the box.
Similarly, to the Toro, Spalletti’s men also implemented a high press at times in order to force mistakes out of the opposition. The press is only done in the first phase of play as should it not work, there is a great chance of recovering whilst at the same time, should the ball be won, you are already in the final third with numbers around the ball. Inter have done this in almost every game this season and exactly like on Wednesday, it benefited them greatly as they won the ball back within a short period.
Every player here knows their role in the press and it forces Sirigu to try to play it out but instead the ball trickles out for a throw-in since Moretti, the player who was receiving the ball, recognised that should he attempt to control the pass, he could lose it to Candreva and therefore give Inter a clear-cut chance.
Second Half:
Inter’s type of press was hurting them more than it was benefiting them at times. Of course, a lot of the time it goes well but occasionally it goes wrong and, in this match, that happened one too many times. An example being when Cancelo made a poor pass leading to possession being lost. Inter then performed a gegenpress (it means to press and put pressure on your opponents as soon as the ball has been lost) however Ansaldi was able to dribble his way past three players before creating a 3v3 situation deep into the Inter half. That all stemmed from the distance between the players pressing being too wide, especially the defence.
A tactic former Roma manager, Luciano Spalletti has added to his arsenal of late is giving Cancelo the freedom of the right-hand side. This has allowed Candreva or whoever is playing ahead of the Portuguese loanee to tuck inside creating more options and usually a numerical advantage whilst Cancelo gets the chance to use his pace and silky ball skills to beat a man. That tactic was kept in place for this match as Rafinha/Candreva and Borja Valero showed options inside or made runs into space.
Not only that but with Ivan on the other side, this forces the opposition to be stretched thus creating gaps for runners inside to exploit. Hence why both Borja Valero and Rafinha/Candreva were operating where they were.
Inter’s style remained the same for the most part with Cancelo the ideal target on attacks so that he can either cross to players bombarding the penalty area or so he can take on his man/add width. Torino however were fairly content with this and their answer to Cancelo and the width he was bringing was to just sit deep & compact whilst dealing with anything that came into the box.
As you can see, the backline is very tight, not allowing any gaps for Inter to find passes through and the midfield was similar. Not actually pressing Inter’s midfield much but instead cutting off the passing lanes through the middle.
The final 5 minutes of the game was largely just attack vs defence with everyone but Handanović cemented inside the Torino half. It was also just crossing practice for Cancelo or that is what it seemed like since he ended up attempting a total of 30 crosses throughout the match yet only 5 were successful. Overall, Inter will feel hard done by to not even get a point from this fixture but this should hopefully show them that they can’t switch off at all if we are to achieve our targets this season.
Conclusion:
Three points missed. This was a game that we should’ve won with the chances we had but sometimes that is how the cookie crumbles. Hitting the post, the bar, having a shot cleared off the line, Sirigu performing wonder saves, you name it. Yes, Torino had chances too but for me to really criticise the team would be wrong. They done enough to win this match and at the least get a draw but it wasn’t to be. We can be grateful to Fiorentina for beating Roma at the Stadio Olimpico and hopefully the players see this as an anomaly, a one off and get back on track next week against Atalanta which will most certainly be a tough game.
