According to Gazzetta dello Sport, Saturday’s Derby d’Italia clash at San Siro will carry added significance for four key figures at Inter – Luciano Spalletti, Mauro Icardi, Joao Miranda and Antonio Candreva.
For Spalletti, this weekend’s match against Juventus represents a potentially decisive moment in the Nerazzurri’s race for the Champions League, a race the Milanese paper believe they cannot afford to lose. “Failure to reach Europe’s top club competition would be a genuine disaster,” they write, “a failure from every point of view.
“Beyond the sporting prestige Champions League qualification brings with it one would need to examine the financial damage it would cause. Not receiving the revenue it brings would make it much harder to respect UEFA’s Financial Fair Play regulations and slow down the club’s revival even further.”
Inter-Juventus is also an important match for Icardi, though, as a match-winning performance against the Bianconeri would take him closer to a first career participation in the Champions League, as well as a first appearance in a World Cup.
As for Miranda and Candreva, victory on Saturday would increase the pair’s chances of securing contract extensions at the end of the season, as a top four finish would make things much simpler in that sense.
