December 2010 FIFA world champions – November 2011 Serie A relegation contenders.

Since Mourinho moved to Madrid in June 2010 after the TREBLE, Inter have gone through 4 coaches, have won an Italian League cup and sold their seasonal most influential player (Samuel Eto’o).

What is Inter up to? Nothing more than its DNA would call for. Inter’s theme song is “Pazza Inter Amala” which translates into “Love this crazy Inter” and this team is crazy by name and crazy by nature.

Inter are currently undergoing 2 main projects which are Financial Fair play strategy and rejuvenation of the squad. Since 2009 Inter have sold every season one of their most influential and high wage players (2009 Ibrahimovic, 2010 Balotelli, 2011 Eto’o) in order to invest in the transfer market for young players (Coutinho, Nagatomo, Alvarez, Poli, Ranocchia, Viviano…), reduce the wage bill as well as growing the homegrown talent (Faraoni, Obi, Crisetig…).

This brings us to the Roller coaster, Inter squad (about 28 players) is made up of a large % of highly professional seasoned players 30+ and than a crop of younger talent all sub 23. The middle range 24-29 which is generally the peak performers in terms of quantity and quality is represented solely by 3 players.

Now add onto this a very expectant Inter support base, a very injury prone start to both 2010/11 and 2011/12 seasons, a couple of short term decisions by Management and you have 4 coaching changes (Benitez, Leonardo, Gasperini, Ranieri).

Here are a couple of roller coaster stats 2011/12 campaign started with 5 losses in 6 games, the last 2 month saw the same team record 8 wins in a row and 10 wins in 12 games. By mid October 2011 Inter were 5th bottom of the league and at the same time were top of their Champions League group. Here comes the roller coaster theme again from 4th bottom in November 11 Inter have climbed to 4th in Jan 12 only 2 games from the top.

Another record Inter fielded the eldest team in Champions league history on 2nd Nov 11 Lille – Inter 0 1 average inter age 31.3yrs.
This team has the ability of not winning leagues for almost 20 years then winning 5 in a row as well as scoring the most number of points in Serie A, both in 2 points system (58pts in 88/89) & 3 points system (97pts in 06/07), winning the most number of consecutive games (17 in 06/07) in a professional top flight football league, longest period unbeaten on home soil in Italy 53 games (22 March 08 to 14 Nov 2010). Currently hold the record for the eldest outfield player currently playing at 38 (J.Zanetti the captain who also has the most number of minutes played this season for Inter 1616 when this article was written).

Tonight (25th Jan 2012) Inter plays in Naples for a Semi-final spot in the Italian cup against a emergent Napoli side.

What can we expect next from this team? No clue…

I hope this has been interesting reading from my first ever article.
Ora e sempre Forza Inter!!

Ciao for now.

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