Former Inter goalkeeper Walter Zenga has said that Ionut Radu’s mistake was a conceptual issue with Inter’s play and praised the team for rallying around him, according to a report in the Italian media today.
Speaking during an interview with La Gazzetta dello Sport, Walter Zenga explained that there was a tactical error behind the mistake because the ball should not have gone from Ivan Perisic back to the goalkeeper at that moment.
“If we want to analyse things from a tactical point of view, there is a serious conceptual error. And I think that Inzaghi also agrees. At that moment the ball had to be played in a different way.
“Perisic has a long throw five meters from the byline with the opponent under pressure, that ball must go high towards the forwards. Then if it’s lost, we are already in good shape to defend ourselves.”
When he was then asked if the goal is not the fault of Ionut Radu, he explained that of course the goalkeeper made a mistake but it is too easy to assign all of the blame to Ionut Radu.
“It is obvious that Radu’s mistake is there. But it is the concept that is wrong from the beginning. Too easy to blame everything on Radu. Shall we blame the weakest?
“There are four more games here, if Inter loses the Scudetto it will certainly not have been Radu’s fault.”
The former goalkeeper chose to focus on the fact that he was impressed by the way the Inter players rallied around Ionut Radu at the full time whistle and Denzel Dumfries blocked that TV camera from filming the Romanian goalkeeper.
“I don’t know if Handanovic is back on Sunday, but in the meantime, I have seen important things: Dumfries covering the camera, Dimarco, Correa and Cordaz cheering him up and I’m sure everyone – and I stress everyone – in the locker room has done it. If he plays in Udine, he will have to have the strength to reset everything and start from scratch.”
A debate around goalkeepers being asked to play out from the back has been ingnited by the mistake in the 2-1 defeat to Bologna.
“The idea of exploiting the quality of the goalkeeper with your feet is right if done when needed: the concept of building from the back in modern football is very valid because – as De Zerbi says – I play backwards to make others come forward and take advantage of the spaces.”
