A hard season ahead for Internazionale?

I viewed the result of Inter's match with Siena yesterday with a feeling of resignation. A 2-0 loss at home at San Siro to a team Inter would normally expect to beat, with all due respect to Siena, doesn't signal a great season ahead. After an extremely poor last season, where we scraped into 6^th place, there were high hopes for a return to winning ways. However, results so far haven't been great.

Way back at the start of August, things looked rosy with a 3-0 win away to Hajduk Split in the Europa League 3^rd Qualifying Round first leg, but that was followed up with a 2-0 loss at home in the second leg. Two more promising wins followed away to FC Vaslui and Pescara, but things have seemingly gone downhill since then. This month has seen a 3-1 loss at home to Roma, and although we won 2-0 at Torino in the next match, this was followed with a scraped 2-2 draw with Rubin Kazan and Sunday's 2-0 loss to Siena, both at San Siro.


During the summer the notoriously poor pitch was relaid at San Siro, in an effort to improve the playing surface. Some in Italy have said that this has caused a curse on the stadium, as both Inter and AC are yet to win a single game there in all competitions. I'm not so superstitious though, as I can understand that a period of rebuilding is happening with several former leaders of our team such as Maicon, Lucio, and Julio Cesar having left, and several young players now stepping up to try and fill their shoes; a few bumps in the road are to be expected.

On paper the team put out against Siena looked relatively strong: Samir Handanovic, a good goalkeeper who replaced Julio Cesar. Nagatomo, Rannochia, Juan, and Alvaro Pereira in defence, Cambiasso, Gargano, Guarin and Wesley Sneijder in midfield behind Diego Milito and Antonio Cassano. Nagatomo is a hard-working fullback who likes to get forward, and who scored the last minute equaliser against Rubin. Rannochia and Juan are young centrebacks with a lot of promise, who until yesterday's game were receiving praise as a centreback pairing. The midfield seems solid, with the ever-reliable Esteban Cambiasso, Walter Gargano, a tough midfielder, and Guarin supporting Wesley Sneijder and allowing him to go create for two top strikers, Diego Milito and Antonio Cassano. The match was also notable for being the first time 39 year old Javier Zanetti, or Captain Fantastic as I like to call him, was rested since December 2008.

Despite the strong team, we were caught on the break twice, with Siena scoring two counter attacks in what was an exciting and pretty open match. I was most disappointed about how disorganised the defence was for the goals, with our defenders seemingly panicking as the Siena players ran at them. Again, these players haven't played together many times, and they are young, so hopefully this will improve as the season goes on.

Inter have the chance to bounce back away at Chievo on Wednesday and despite how much they frustrate me sometimes, I'll be supporting them as usual. I remember the 90s and early 2000s, with the long period of failing to win the league, and especially the gut-wrenching Sunday afternoon in 2002 where we lost the Scudetto to Juventus on the last day of the season with a 4-2 loss to Lazio. Since 2004 it's been better days, with league wins, and the treble-winning season of 2010 where we won the Champions League again after 45 years, on my birthday. After all that success I can handle a couple of less than perfect seasons. Forza Inter.