Legendary Italy coach Marcello Lippi once said that the Serie A season doesn’t really begin until it’s 9 or 10 matches old, that only then can you start to tell which teams are going to fight for the top spots and which teams are going to struggle. After the best performance of the season so far where they thrashed Lazio at the Stadio Olimpico to go up in joint second place with Napoli, Inter are in a very good place now that the Serie A really begins.
“I’d rather be a lucky coach and win than a good coach and lose” José Mourinho said when in charge of Inter during his two memorable years in charge of the Nerazzurri. Last night Luciano Spalletti was equally good as he was lucky when fielding that particular starting lineup. Lucky, because it was a risk, to put it mildly, to start with a Joao Mario who has struggled the few times he’s played and who for all intents and purposes is a player that wants to leave and one Inter want to leave too.
But Joao Mario’s naturally deeper position turned Spalletti’s 4-2-3-1 into a 4-3-3 which Lazio coach Simone Inzaghi was completely unprepared for, as well as unable to find an answer for until it was too late. The three man midfield combo of Brozovic, Vecino and Joao Mario worked like clockwork and allowed Inter to dominate the midfield for most of the match.
If starting with Joao Mario was more of a lucky gamble that paid off rather than skill, the decision to play Miranda instead of de Vrij was pure tactical brilliance by the former Roma tactician. Not only did he spare the Dutchman a night of unnecessary jeers and whistles by the home crowd on a ground where he was put in a very awkward situation last time he played on it, but his replacement, Joao Miranda, looked like he turned the clock back 3-4 years. The former Atletico Madrid man played with confidence, intelligence and natural leadership that we haven’t seen all season and the partnership with Milan Skriniar looked better than ever before. Based on yesterday’s performance, it is genuinely impossible to say which pairing is the better: Skriniar and de Vrij or Skriniar and Miranda.
In midfield Marcelo Brozovic and Matias Vecino controlled the tempo of the game, especially in the first half, when the duo turned trio for the night complemented each other immaculately. The transformation Marcelo Brozovic has undergone under Luciano Spalletti since January of this year is nothing short of flabbergasting. Under Spalletti’s guidance Brozovic has turned from a player destined to never fulfill his potential to being a world class midfielder whose passing is a sight of beauty to behold.
Together with Vecino, whose lungs must be made of steel given that he doesn’t seem to know what fatigue is but only knows how to run run and then run some more, Joao Marioa and Brozovic gave an epic midfield masterclass against a Lazio who is hardly in shortage of midfield class.
This dominance in midfield afforded wingers Matteo Politano and Ivan Perisic the time and space to focus almost entirely on creating chances for Inter and a certain Mauro Icardi up front. Perisic has struggled since the World Cup but for the first 60 minutes of the match he looked to be working his way back into form before becoming tired and lowering his level. Lowering yes, but not collapsing as he has done in other matches so far this season which suggests that whatever Spalletti is doing with him is working.
Meanwhile Matteo Politano looks just as good as any Inter fan could have wished for as he absolutely looks to be enjoying his football at the minute. His finishing still needs working on but when you have Mauro Icardi in this form it doesn’t matter because he will score 2 goals in 2 shots on goal, as he did against Lazio last night, and it’s game over. The literal interpretation of the term start to the season, started rather shaky for Inter, but the figurative start to the Serie A as per Lippi is nothing short of sensational.
