Author: isport

Inter Milan are already left focusing on the next season after they are on course to miss out on Champions League football for yet another season.

The much anticipated revival after the appointment of Walter Mazzarri has not arrived, as the team has struggled in the second half of the campaign. This has seen them slip quite significantly compared with rivals like Napoli and Fiorentina. They are right now fifth in the table and with no opportunity to even get into the top four places. Fiorentina occupy the fourth place and are on a much superior run of form.

Inter have managed just one win in the last five matches, but Mazzarri has said that the team is definitely improving in the last few weeks. Since the 2-0 win over strugglers Hellas Verona, they have been unable to get three points. The 52-year-old Mazzarri has come under intense pressure for this reason, with many even suggesting that he could face the sack before the end of the campaign. Inter have already made plans for signing established players for next season.

They have announced the deal to bring in Manchester United captain Nemanja Vidic on a free transfer and this is expected to improve the team substantially at the back.
“I see signs of growth. Implementation of the tactics and the organisation of the team have improved. I will do everything possible and impossible to bring this team as high as possible. Depending on how we finish will be easier to plan for the future. Whoever wants to stay in this team will have to ensure a certain level. Everything will be evaluated. To maintain high levels takes constant concentration,” said Mazzarri.

Inter Milan next take on Bologna in the league and this will be a very tough match for the strugglers.

Inter Milan have confirmed through their sporting director that they plan to retain Walter Mazzarri into next season as well. The former Napoli manager came to the club with a big reputation of achieving a lot with relatively low budgets.

He did extremely well at Napoli and help of the club almost win the title by beating Juventus in the season before last. He was expected to finally revive the club, who have been suffering since the departure of Jose Mourinho in 2010. Since winning the Champions League, the club has been on a steady decline.

They failed to qualify for any European competition this season, while they do not look like getting back into the Champions League for next season as well. Inter Milan started the season in excellent fashion and looked like being potential title contenders, but the early-season optimism quickly faded and the club has slipped into the fifth position in the last few months. It looks highly likely that they will end up in the fifth place at the end of the season. Despite this poor campaign, the club are planning to retain their faith in Mazzarri according to sporting director, Piero Ausilio.

Mazzarri was given a chance to spend during the January transfer window, but it did not improve results. The club remains 11 points behind the top three places.

“He works 24 hours a day. He follows all the movements of the team. Mazzarri is part of the foundation. You can already see a growing team, a different game, a solid defence. Despite our ranking, it looks like that. Mazzarri will remain, regardless of where we finish. Mazzarri has worked wonders with Rolando, we want to keep him. [Andrea] Ranocchia we will talk with at the end of the season but I wouldn’t rule out a renewal,” said Ausilio.

Galatasaray manager Roberto Mancini has claimed that former Inter Milan manager Jose Mourinho was able to win the Champions League only with the team he assembled at the club. Mancini spent several years at Inter Milan and he was extremely successful at the Italian club.

He won several league titles in a row in what is regarded as the club’s finest period in their history. However, it has been since debated that Mancini was able to achieve this success only because of their rivals failing at the perfect moment.

This has been argued because of the club’s failure to do well in Europe during the Mancini regime. Mourinho was brought to the club with the aim of doing well in Europe and he achieved impressive success in only his second season with the club.

He managed to win the treble including the Champions league, which the club lifted after a gap of more than 40 years, in 2010. Mourinho and Mancini come up against each other for the first time since the Portuguese enjoyed a lot of success at Inter Milan. The two will be in the opposite dugouts when Galatasaray take on Chelsea into Champions League.

Mourinho won the treble with several of the players Mancini brought and the former Manchester City boss has raised this issue ahead of the Champions league tie.

“Mourinho won the Champions League because he took a good team. He took a team that, like Manchester City, I had built. A team that had a strong mentality. When I went to Inter, they played very bad football and we changed this. To win a Champions League you should be lucky. [The] Champions League is a different competition but a strange one. Strange because you can win your group in October, November, December and, after maybe February everything can change,” said Mancini.

There is some good news for the Inter Milan fans. Fredy Guarin, one of the important players of the team, isn’t going to be sold in the presently open mid season transfer window. The sporting director of the club gave this information to the reporters.

Inter had actually put Guarin on sale a few days ago and Chelsea had shown a lot of interest in buying him, but, the two clubs couldn’t reach an agreement on transfer fee and eventually, Inter decided that the player would continue playing for them for the remaining part of the ongoing season.

The transfer fee that Inter had demanded from Chelsea for letting Guarin go is believed to be somewhere around 15 million Pounds and that wasn’t too much considering the way Guarin has performed in recent times. But, the Blues management had different opinion and that’s why, they didn’t agree to pay that much for the Colombian international.

Piero Ausilio who is the sporting director of Inter at the moment talked to the press yesterday evening about this issue and he made it quite clear that Guarin would remain in Italy at least for another few months.

Ausilio said, “Fredy isn’t going anywhere in near future and we are glad about it. Yes, we had been talking to Chelsea regarding him, but, we didn’t agree to them on certain terms and the deal didn’t get finalized.”

“We never wanted Fredy to leave the club in the middle of the season. He is one of the vital guys in the team.”

The Inter Milan board might be happy with the fact that Guarin would stay, but, they would certainly not be happy with the current position of the team in the Serie A points table. The Black and Blues are at no. 6 with 31 points in 18 games.

Javier Zanetti, the captain of Inter Milan, is thinking of lying on till the 2015’s summer when he would turn forty two. The forty year old midfield player’s present contract with the Italian giants ends next summer. Now Zanetti has expressed his desire to play for Inter for one more year.

According to reports, he told Inter Milan’s official website that he would like to stay and give his contribution to this great family that Inter Milan is. The Argentine footballer came back to play in 2 – 0 victory over Livorno on Sunday for the very 1st time since tearing his Achilles tendon against Palermo earlier in April.

He told that the match against Livorno was a match full of emotion. After so much time away from the pitch, he dreamt of such a night.

Zanetti joined Inter Milan from Argentinian team Banfield in the year 1995. He is just forty three appearances shy of cracking Serie A appearance record which is currently held by former AC Milan player Paolo Maldini, who had 647 appearances in Serie A.

Zanetti told that with Inter Milan, the target is to go back to have a starring role. The Italian league is tough and there are several teams which compete for the same targets as them. But they are working quite well and they want to fight for something very important.

Inter Milan president Massimo Moratti has said that he is left stunned by the impact that new manager Walter Mazzarri is having on the club.

After arriving only in the summer to replace Andrea Stramaccioni, Mazzarri has been able to get the team into the third position after four matches this season. They have been playing some of the best football in the last few years. Inter have been struggling to reach the heights of 2010 when they were managed by José Mourinho. However, early signs have been suggesting that the team is very close to achieving those heights once again.

Mazzarri has recently oversaw his team manage a stunning 7-0 win over Sassuolo in the league during the weekend. This victory means that they have dropped only two points and that too in the difficult derby against Juventus last weekend. Apart from them, they have torn apart their opposition in the matches so far. In fact, the club has conceded just one goal in the last four matches, which has helped them remain just two points behind Roma and Napoli in the table. Napoli and Roma are the two teams left in the league to boast of a 100% record after four matches.

“No, I didn’t expect Mazzarri to have quite this impact. He’s done brilliantly because he’s a hard worker and he’s instilled the same sense of joy and duty that he has in everyone else. Hopefully that will continue. The players seemed proud to be playing for the shirt. When you win you feel you’re part of an ideal. We’ve spent intelligently, bringing in lots of youngsters who have come in for criticism but are showing how talented they are,” said Moratti, who is reportedly on the verge of selling a major stake in the club to a foreign consortium.

Former Napoli manager Walter Mazzarri has sensationally claimed that he does not think his team Inter Milan will be the favourites for the Italian Serie A title in the coming season.

He has said that Juventus and Napoli will be starting the new season as the favourites. Mazzarri made the switch to Inter Milan over the summer after several years with Napoli. During this period, he has managed to get the club into a position where they are considered as potential challengers for the title. They almost won the title last season had it not been for the brilliance from Juventus, who have now won the title in consecutive seasons.

Antonio Conte’s men will once again be the favourites according to Mazzarri, who has said that Inter Milan are still in a period of transition. It was not long ago that the club managed to win as much as five league titles in succession. Tremendous success also followed in the form of the treble in 2010, but the squad has since changed a lot due to several problems. The club has been making several new signings who are going to be good in the future. Mazzarri has also said that the threat from the likes of Fiorentina and Lazio should also not be discounted either.

“Besides Juventus, I think that in terms of financial muscle and on the strength of the last four years, Napoli could be a notch above the rest. Along with Juve. There are at least six or seven teams, including Fiorentina and Lazio, who will be bunched together on the starting grid. It’s hard to know who has got more quality, who can do better. It depends on how you work on the pitch, on whether you manage to exploit the players’ ability to the maximum,” said Mazzarri.

Speculation continues to be large that Inter Milan will part ways with manager Andrea Stramaccioni at the end of the season, but the former youth team manager has expressed his confidence that he will remain at the job next season.

Despite Inter Milan president Massimo Moratti saying that he has no plans to sack Stramaccioni after a very poor season, speculation continues to be mounting as the season comes to a close. Stramaccioni was given the task of getting Inter Milan back into the Champions League at the end of the season, but they will be without even the Europa league next season.

The club has finished outside the top five in the table. In fact, they are in danger of dropping out of the top 10 itself if there were a few more matches remaining in the season. The club are currently ninth in the Italian Serie A table. This has been named an acceptable by many given the amount of money spent by the club in the last few transfer windows, but Stramaccioni has said that the club has been in transitional phase for the last few years and fans need to have patience in order to achieve success.

Napoli manager Walter Mazzarri has been linked with the job heavily in the last few weeks. “Moratti confirmed me four days ago, so I doubt he has changed his mind in such a short space of time. Even if he did, I would have absolutely no complaints. I must always thank the president for what he has given me. If I am to leave before I expect to, then there will only be regrets that I didn’t get the results I could’ve done due to the injuries. There is such a thing as an unlucky year,” said the 37-year-old.