Legendary former Inter goalkeeper Walter Zenga feels that it’s inaccurate to suggest that the error from Andrei Radu that allowed Bologna to score the winner against the Nerazzurri was a Scudetto-costing mistake.
Speaking to Italian broadcaster Sky Sport Italia, Zenga defended Radu and also emphasized how it was not just the young goalkeeper who had caused the error to happen.
Radu completely lost control of a ball from a throw-in by Ivan Perisic, keeping it too casual and losing the path of the ball which then headed towards an empty net where Nicola Sansone was able to tap it in.
However, the amount of pressure that the 24-year-old was under in the situation is something that Zenga was keen to emphasize, especially as a former goalkeeper himself.
For him, while Radu obviously had a major technical misstep in the moment, he had also been played into trouble by his teammates, while the moment was also obviously just an isolated one in a long season.
“I often say that certain goalkeeping mistakes are not to be attributed exclusively to the goalkeepers,”he said, “yesterday’s mistake by Radu. for example.”
“It’s true that it’s a technical error by the player but if we look closely at the action, Inter have a throw-in practically in their penalty area, and Perisic also has a very long throw that sometimes seems a like corner kick,” he said.
“In this case the first thing a coach says is always to play the ball forward because if you lose it you still have the team lined up,” he argued, “here there was a series of errors, first from Perisic who plays that ball with de Vrij under pressure from Sansone.”
“Then from Radu who unfortunately turns in the wrong way, and this proves decisive,” he added.
“We’re used to looking at the error and not the why, the process that led to the error,” he said. “We all blame Radu today but we’re not looking at the contributing series of errors that led to the final Radu error.”
“I’m an Inter fan, everyone knows it,” Zenga said,”but as a coach I evaluate a situation in which my team behaved in the wrong way considering the situation of the match.”
“There are ten minutes left, six players under pressure, and if we review the images we see that Bologna are under pressure one on one,” he said.
“I repeat, Perisic has a very long throw, at which point the ball must be played high, while he played it not to Radu but to De Vrij, who in turn raises his arm to tell the goalkeeper to play it on the other side,” he explained.
“It’s quite a tactical error,” he argued. “They tried to get out of a dangerous situation by putting themselves in danger. It’s absurd.”
“A player like Radu, who’s young, who hadn’t played all season except in the Coppa Italia against Empoli, felt a sense of responsibility,” he said.
But Zenga made his point that “It can’t be said that Inter lost the Scudetto due to Radu’s error, it was Inter who made an error as a whole.”