Mourinho-Handcuffs

In his regular Wednesday column Inter fanatic Sam Olsen will be delving deep into the stories that matter to Inter’s fans looking to keep the spirit of discussion and dispute alive and well on the pages of Sempreinter.com. New Zealander Sam has published several books on military history as well as contributing to a number of sport and news related websites. His love for Inter began in 1997 watching Ronaldo waltz through confused defences in the famous blue and black, and he has enjoyed the roller coaster ride ever since. His favourite moment was watching the team lift the Coppa Italia in 04-05 with Mancini, breaking the long domestic trophy drought, while his favourite player is Javier Zanetti, the great one, who encompasses everything good and right about the club.

After watching Inter doing their utmost to grab a draw from the clutches of victory in a somewhat slapstick match with a Bologna team that would strike fear into the hearts of only those who had never seen a game of football previously, I went to bed convinced that some terrible earth shattering tragedy was surely on its way. I was therefore joyously overwhelmed when I prised my eyes open on Sunday morning to find that the sky had not fallen on my head, that my simple apartment building remained steadfastly standing in an upright position, and that out on the streets, aside from an overnight shower which left a few stray puddles of water, no horseman roamed around smiting man and beast and wrecking havoc on the hapless population of this planet, although there were a couple of sinister looking elderly gentlemen cruising down my street on some scooters that I am sure exceeded the allowable sound levels for that time of the morning.

The reason for my angst you ask? Simple. After a season spent watching my beloved Nerazzurri being beaten, bashed and bruised in opposing penalty areas without the merest hint of interest from the referee in blowing his whistle, Internazionale, on the 5th of April 2014, were awarded their first penalty of the season. If that was not an omen of a cataclysmic event I don’t know what is! It was a sight that I and many other fans had believed we would probably never see, perhaps ever again, and for it to come at a key moment in the match, when tied at 2-2 made it even more incredible. This was no token penalty offered as a gift by a referee when the game was already won or lost, one whose pointlessness offered a hapless referee a degree of safety because it would in no way affect the outcome of the game. No this was a real, 100%, 3 points potentially in the bag, opposition manager whining to the media, penalty. By the time I had lifted my jaw from the ground in amazement that this referee had not just realised both teams could be awarded penalties, but actually went and gave Inter one, a strange sense of calm and an inevitability that we would miss had descended on me as I watched Diego Milito, the iceman himself, knock the ball within reach of Curci’s surely comically large super hand, which swatted it down like juiced up doorman knocking back drunken revellers. The keeper then celebrated like he had just won the mega bingo jackpot kicking off his own supercharged version of the Gangnam Style dance just to add icing to a particularly bitter cake. After all poor old Diego must have been as surprised as anyone to have found himself standing on the penalty spot after such a long time, he probably wasn’t really sure what he was supposed to do there, after all it isn’t like they are going to waste time in training practising penalties when it could be better spent perfecting mis-passes in midfield or identifying the best spaces to leave opposing players unmarked in your own goal box.

But before digging deeper into this penalty malaise, let’s get the stat’s book out and check out the penalty count for the club since the 03/04 season to see where this season sits in Inter’s recent penalty history:
03/04: 3
04/05: 6
05/06: 5
06/07: 8
07/08: 9
08/09: 4
09/10: 6
10/11: 6
11/12: 11
12/13: 5
13/14: 1 (so far)
Total 64
Season average: 5.8

As you can see there have been ups and downs but we have averaged about 5.8 penalties per season which obviously highlights the extraordinary nature of this season’s efforts. A lot has changed since the days when Roma’s serial whiner Danielle di Rossi was moaning about how Roma had no chance of winning the title in 2009 because the referees gave all the calls Inter’s way, although I did just see that he said pretty much the same thing this season about Juventus and the referees so I guess in the moaner di Rossi’s case some things will never change. It is not as if referees have not had the opportunity to give Inter any penalties as there have been several clear cut chances to do so but none, until Saturday night, were taken. Until that momentous occasion many fans were left thinking it would take a tank to come steaming onto the pitch and clattering into the side of poor old Guarin to get the call, although we all know that if Fredy himself was left to take the shot the odds of it hitting the net would be about the same as good old Rafa Benetiz announcing he had patched things up with Massimo and was making a shock return to the club. With all this in mind then what could be behind this hesitancy by referees to make the big calls Inter’s way?
First of all I don’t want to go down the conspiracy road and blame it all on Juventus, although I do love blaming Juventus for all ills that afflict the Italian game. I want to believe that they have cleaned up their act and all is now above board on the peninsula, after all the Italian government were able to finally excise the Burlesconi virus so the country’s football world must stand some chance too. With this in mind I chose to dig a little deeper.

During this digging, or maybe scratching is a more apt description, I stumbled upon some interesting statistics that may shed light on Inter’s poor penalty record. One stat in particular piqued my interest; that of yellow cards given out for diving. Now, most yellow cards for diving are given inside the area when a player is trying to con the referee by throwing himself to the ground in a farcical manner, much to the ire of opposing players and supporters. This season Inter have been given no yellows for for this offence and sit at the bottom of this table with Cagliari. The record for most yellows for diving goes to Fiorentina with an Olympic level 6, funnily enough they also led the penalty count with a lofty nine. In general the teams with more cards for diving have also more penalties with the major and obvious exceptions of Livorno who have 5 cards for diving and only 3 penalties, and Cagliari who have no cards for diving and 6 penalties. Aside from the limitations and dare I say obvious flaws in basing anything on this data, it does raise an interesting question about whether Inter’s players are doing enough to actually convince the referees they have been fouled. To say they should all slip into some nice little blue and black swimming briefs and throw themselves into the pool for training might be a bit excessive but one must wonder how many penalties have the team missed out on because they are simply hopeless at extenuating contact? Do Inter play too fair and expect too much from the referees and their assistants, hoping that they will see these fouls rather than making sure they see these fouls at the risk of being yellow carded for overdoing it? One looks at the 11/12 squad who were able to draw a massive 11 penalties and wonder whether we would have had more this year if Milito had been fit or Sneijder and Pazzini were still on the books, three players well versed in the arts of drawing fouls and ensuring any contact is extenuated for the referee. It is all fine and good to hope that the referee will do the right thing and make the right call every time, but in the modern game and for modern professionals who are paid a large sum of money for what they do, it is essential that they do as much as they can to ‘help’ the referee make the right decision, something that, perhaps Inter have failed to do this season.