Former Inter defender Marco Materazzi gave a long interview to Italian nespaper La Repubblica where he spoke about the upcoming derby della Madonnina on this Sunday night at the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza in Milano’s San Siro district.

The treble winning defender from Mourinho’s all conquering 2010 team began by stating that “It is better that AC Milan are favorites. The derby is about stimulation not about who is calmer. Inter must play it with confidence, without thinking of the past. The match does not explain anything to me: in the 5-0 against Chievo they looked like they were in another league, then in the dark.

“The San Siro is scary, but please, playing at San Siro is a prize, if you got there it is because you have deserved it and you have to feel its pride, not terror, and lucky them that they always have 60 thousand spectators: even when we won everything in the world we had many less” Materazzi continued.

The FIFA World Cup winner from 2006 was then asked about his thoughts on Luciano Spalletti stating that: “I’ve always been a fan of his, and he’s an intelligent person, he is self-criticial, and it is not by chance that he said: ‘I was wrong too’. When you concede a goal, it is  the fault of the whole team. When you do not win it is not only the fault of Perisic or Ranocchia.”

Materazzi then turned to the race for the Champions League places stating that: “If they manage to finish fourth, they just have to do it. For what they did in the first half of the season and for the value of the squad, which is not so inferior to Lazio and Roma, where there are not all these former winners of the championships and cups, while they wont be able to take Juventus and Napoli. But the atomic attack of Lazio does not have no one: Felipe Anderson is one of my favorites, Luis Alberto seems to go very slowly and instead does not lose the ball, Immobile always scores.”

Matrix then turned to analyze AC Milan under Gennaro Gattuso stating that: “They never concede goals and have a coach that runs with them, so they already have 12 players. He has huge merits, Rino. When I start to watch a Milan game I will say to my children: ‘You will see that even today Rino will do his 10 kilometers’, and he does not do it for the public, he is really like that, he is making sense of the season and his career, proving to be worth a lot. Mirabelli would have given him this opportunity, he strongly wanted it and we were few who believed in him, instead most thought that after 3-4 years as a coach in which he had been beaten left and right, then he would be ready.

“Only a fool like him could stay in Pisa after the promotion in B, but the clubs situation was what it was, it was relegated, but it remained standing. I too thought that he was too far down with Milan by taking the Primavera, on the other hand, it was right. I am his first fan, I know he has passion, will and competence, and it is not by chance that he is one of our Coverciano mates, that of the 2006 world champions: me, him, Cannavaro, Grosso, Inzaghi, Zambrotta” Materazzi continued.

Materazzi then turned to the moment Italian football is going through stating that: “We understand the cycles like this, but there is also a huge cultural problem: elsewhere they rebuild in a hurry, here it is hard to leave the old for the new. When I was young, the defenders in the Serie A were Maldini, Nesta, Stam, Cannavaro, Thuram, Costacurta, Fernando Couto, Mihajlovic, and the attackers we met on Sunday were Batistuta, Shevchenko, Vieri, Crespo, Chiesa. It was like going to university, now it’s a middle school.”

In conclusion Materazzi was asked about his future: “I’m waiting for a project that will probably will never come to Italy, in which one can field his knowledge and assume his responsibilities, then in case of failure, send greetings and return home, but it is increasingly difficult, now even in England some clubs have 2-3 months of patience and that’s it, I’ll wait, I’ll be happy anyway.”