Now the Inter season can really be considered over. Or perhaps a new season begins under lines and auspices all to be verified.

There is something deeply unpleasant in the way Inter greeted the Club World Cup. Not for the result itself, because in football it is lost much more often than you win. And Chivu’s team showed up at this appointment with many problems to be solved and in conditions that are not bright at all. However, after the beautiful battle against River Plate, something more was expected even against the Fluminense: but the overall attitude, mental fragility, a certain leisure in certain situations both offensive and defensive, Nhon admit underlying recriminations. The 2-0 defeat against Fluminense sanctions an absolutely right elimination to the round of 16.

Inter-Fluminense, the game

Germán Cano scores after three minutes using a cross read in a very clumsy way from the defense of Inter. Which, on the other hand, struggles to react, builds little and in a very predictable way. The difference in condition becomes with the passing of the extra-evident minutes, but it is above all a certain general confusion in the maneuver of Chivu’s team that is dominated. The Brazilians have at least two opportunities to double: then they mark the 2-0 which is canceled for an irregular position of Ignacio on the candle support. Sommer is the best of the first half with at least two decisive parades.

The most significant moment of Inter is at the start of recovery, when the Nerazzurri team builds a couple of sharp goals. It is not much but it is still something: Fabio, 44 ​​years old, makes the phenomenon between the posts and takes everything. Lautaro chips a pole, De Vrij is missing the easiest opportunity by putting on the bottom in a unfortunate way from very comfortable position. And while the numerous changes imposed by Chivu do not bring the hoped for effects, the flon resumes to attack and closes. Decisive goal three minutes after 90 ‘, another very clumsy defensive reading and doubling of Hercules. And since the fate never lacks the sense of irony, shortly after the Go, opponent Dimarco, with the best conclusion of the evening, hits the crossing of the poles. A paradoxical game: which sees Fabio, the opposing goalkeeper, rewarded as the best in the field despite Inter has concluded little and badly. In a game with few regrets. The greatest of whom is perhaps to have missed the opportunity to play it seriously.

Portaluppi and La Gazzarra before the interval

Among the episodes to underline what happened at the end of the first half, when Renato Portaluppi, the Fluminense technician, holds a ball to prevent Inter from resumption of the game on a lateral replacement. A half a fight is unleashed that at Inter costs some admonitions that would have led to the disqualification of at least two players in view of the quarter -finals.

But all in all, it also allows us to remember who Renato Portaluppi is, technician with a past of striker and subversive statements. A season in Italy, in 1988, at Rome where they remember him for the disco parties and a large number of adoring dancers. To regret it at the end of the championship, more than the fans, were the trattorias of Trastevere. The legend says that in Rome he had taken almost ten kilos: without being able to score only one goal in the championship in more than twenty games.

On the other hand, in a press conference still unforgettable today Renato claimed that Italy – who was preparing to organize the World Cup – would never have won anything … “because the Italian players were all bad lovers, and perhaps a little gay”. The era of the politically correct was then very distant: Giannini who was the leader of that Rome put it to the index, Viola regretted the three billion invested to buy it from Flamengo and respected him to the sender after only one season. Then he won something, more as a coach than as a player. A libertadores, with the wreck (2017), and a handful of Estaduais titles. But with the Fluminense, who trains for the eighth time in his career, eleven years after the last, he could really aim for the title of the Club World Cup. Especially after the sensational result he saw Simone Inzaghi’s Al Hilal eliminate 4-3 in extra time nothing less than the Manchester City of Guardiola and Haaland. Which adds other regrets: above all that of being able to play against their former coach a sensational semifinal certainly within reach.

“Whoever does not want to stay are go away”

That impetus that seems to have been missing on the pitch was instead disruptive in the statements of Lautaro Martinez at the end of the race: “Whoever does not want to fight is better than going away”. Words that split and who photograph perhaps a not very quiet locker room. Words that Chivu somehow signs and which Marotta emphasizes: “Lautaro had it with Calhanoglu. They are the words of a captain who wants and demands from his teammates that same identification that he imposes on himself. Strong and emotional words. And as such to welcome …”

Calhanoglu interests Galatasaray and – it seems – at Bayern Munich, in the quarterfinals also against the PSG European champion. But neither team seems to be willing to invest the twenty million euros that Inter would demand for a player who would go away to zero in not even a year. Marotta is clear: “Whoever wants can go, the door is wide open and we do not keep anyone. But not free. And there are currently no offers”.

On vacation, finally

The team returns to Italy today with its burning load of things said and not said and with different issues to be resolved inside. At the end of a season that ended badly. But also at the beginning of someone who seems to not start in the best way. Even if … “We did what could be, in a difficult season, tired players, emotionally tried, at the end of a cycle of 63 games, twenty more than those who arrived in front of us. They said we lost. It is a somewhat simplistic synthesis: we arrived second. Losing another thing …”, concludes Marotta.

Looking at the glass on the other side, the half -empty one, in second place in Serie A, also correspond to a Italian Cup thrown away in a double derby and two international failures within two weeks with the worst Champions League final ever. The narration of the compact group, of the long rose, of enthusiasm and “there is only Inter” today seems to no longer be enough. And today Inter is called to an exercise that does not love: that of humility. You don’t need a revolution, but you need a steering. A shock. And it serves immediately.