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Italy: Serie A Preview- Inter Milan v Lecce [Sat Sep 17th, 2005]
After a truly embarassing display at Palermo, Inter Milan will try to silence their critics with a convincing win against Lecce.
BACKGROUND
Last week’s result and especially performance in Sicily sparked a lot of debate in Italy and rightly so, because a strong and ambitious team like Inter cannot allow themselves to be so completely outplayed as they were by the islanders.
However, as beleaguered coach Mancini said, it was the first time that his team truly deserved to lose since he took over as coach, and before that night they had suffered only four defeats in all competitions throughout last season (three of those against AC Milan).
With other coaches at Inter, those utterly soulless performances happened much more frequently indeed, but that doesn’t count as an excuse, especially at this early stage of this season - that defeat was a very hard one to swallow for Inter fans.
After the game, notorious Palermo president Zamparini gleefully expressed his apparent hatred towards Inter by blasting everyone from the coach to the players, accusing them primarily of arrogance, which is utterly baffling, because Inter aren’t a team that have anything to be arrogant about!
A week later and Inter are now preparing for their third Serie A match, a much easier task at home against Lecce. It is the start of an intense week, as between now and next Sunday they’ll have played three matches: after this home game they travel to face Chievo and then face Fiorentina at the San Siro in what promises to be a worthwhile game.
Nine points in those games are the objective as right after that they will travel to Turin to face an unbeatable-looking Juventus, hoping the 3-point gap has lessened, which is possible, because Juve are playing Udinese away on Wednesday.
But more than anything, Inter have to show themselves that they can win with regularity and smoothly return to the winning ways of before the international break.
In the UEFA Champions League last Tuesday, Inter started with a disappointingly narrow win against Artmedia Bratislava, a team making their debut in the tournament, but at least they showed some backbone by hanging on to the 1-0 lead when down to 10 men following Juan Veron’s undeserved dismissal.
Inter’s opponents tonight on paper seem to be in disarray and the perfect victim for a goalfest. However in Serie A, things are almost never that easy. Last season Lecce were one of the biggest surprises, especially early in the season when they displayed some spectacular football with eccentric coach Zdenek Zeman, even though ultimately they had to fight against relegation.
But now Zeman is gone and a young, inexperienced coach, Angelo Gregucci, is at the helm and he has been unable to keep the team playing as well as last season, picking up one point in their first two games, against the likes of Livorno and Ascoli.
The team lost a number of important players from last season, and their president Semeraro has also recently resigned. All of this points to a difficult season for the red-and-yellow clad side, but then again this young, feisty team that did so well last year might yet surprise us all. Probably not in this match though.
TEAM NEWS
Inter Milan:
In defence Inter are still missing Mihajlovic, while Samuel will serve his last match of suspension. Winger Solari is also unavailable through injury.
Lecce:
No injury news on the Giallorossi.
PLAYERS TO WATCH
Adriano (Inter):
After looking inevitably tired against Palermo, having played two entire matches with Brazil just before that, he was back to his best against Artmedia, striking the post with a terrific free kick and providing the assist for Julio Cruz (who will probably start on the bench nonetheless) to score the winner. After those two goalless games for him, this one seems like the perfect match to immediately find the net again.
Mirko Vucinic (Lecce):
Over the summer he was reportedly being tracked by Inter as they sought to replace Christian Vieri. Ultimately it came to nothing and Inter had to be content with four strikers. Too bad, because at the moment Inter’s front line doesn’t look as florid as in past years with Vieri gone, and this opportunistic and very prolific goalscorer might have been useful. Much like Palermo’s Makinwa last week, he will be another alleged Inter target looking to prove a point.
POSSIBLE STARTING XIs:
Inter (4-4-2):
Julio Cesar; Ze Maria, Cordoba, Materazzi, Favalli; Figo, Cambiasso, Veron, Stankovic; Martins, Adriano.
Lecce (4-4-2):
Sicignano; Angelo, Diamoutene, Stovini, Rullo; Cassetti, Ledesma, Delvecchio, Pinardi; Vucinic, Konan.
Danilo Pochini
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