Former Inter, Lazio, Roma, and Bologna Sporting Director Walter Sabatini feels that current Nerazzurri coach Simone Inzaghi showed a coach-like attitude as a player unlike any other player he had ever seen.
Speaking to Italian broadcaster DAZN, Sabatini joked that Inzaghi had made himself a “pain in the ass” with his insistence on details and plans whilst he was a striker for Lazio, and also weighed in on some current Nerazzurri players including Kristjan Asllani and Edin Dzeko.
It was never a big secret that Inzaghi was likely to go into coaching, as the former striker made the transition from player to coach quite quickly, becoming a youth team coach for the Biancocelesti shortly after hanging up his boots.
The 46-year-old has only taken it from there, as he impressed in a big way upon his promotion to the bench of Lazio’s senior team before he joined Inter last summer as the replacement for Antonio Conte.
“I worked with him at Lazio,” he recalled of his time as Biancocelesti Sporting director, “he was a pain in the ass like I’d never seen before because he was already acting like the coach on the pitch – he talked to everyone, asked everyone to do things, was always proactive.”
“He’s done very well as a coach,” Sabatini said of the Inter coach, “his Lazio played amazing football.”
“Inter asks for more,” he noted of the demands of coaching the Nerazzurri, “Lazio have a very particular President in the form of Claudio Lotito, but he allows his coaches to work calmly.”
“You have to give Inzaghi time and then see what Inter will need in January,” Sabatini argued, “because something will be needed even if I don’t know what – Beppe Marotta and Piero Ausilio will take care of that.”
Of Nerazzurri midfielder Asllani, Sabatini said that the Albanian’s best quality is “Immediacy, he can always propose an immediate solution on the pitch, even if it’s an interlocutory one, he always has one.”
For this evening’s match between Inter and Roma he predicted that “It will be a match where the teams compete to try and show signs of life, not just for the table but for the overall health of their seasons. Henrikh Mkhitaryan will feel tense, but above all Edin Dzeko will.”
