Lautaro and Chiesa the thorns in the hips. Barella and Locatelli to turn on the light, I waited for Dzeko in Cuadrado
Inter-Juventus will be the usual fight without quarter. Opposite the team that managed to win 9 league titles in a row and the one capable of dethroning it. Compared to last year, both coaches and several interpreters on the pitch have changed. Let’s analyze the challenge on Sunday evening at the Meazza department by department and through the duel between Barella and Locatelli, the engines also of the national team.
ATTACK VS DEFENSE
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In front of Inzaghi he has his most lethal weapon: Edin Dezko, the certainty around which the Nerazzurri coach has so far given shape to a deadly department, with almost double the goals scored compared to the Juventus attack (23 to 12). The Bosnian will be regularly on the field to try to increase a booty that already counts the beauty of six goals in the league and to accompany him will be the other sniper of this first part of the season, Lautaro Martinez (at an altitude of five) The attacking couple most prolific of the tournament if he will see it against a department in clear recovery after the ten goals collected in the first six days. Allegri seems to have registered a rearguard that between the championship and the Champions League is unbeaten in four consecutive games and that on Sunday evening will face his litmus test (exactly like the number that the Sarajevo striker carries on his shoulders). Lautaro’s mobility and Dzeko’s ability to lower himself to receive and sort can be decisive in undermining the low defensive block reorganized by Allegri. Nor should the weight of the high balls be underestimated, fundamental in which Inter dominates thanks to authentic specialists in every department (from Dzeko and Vecino to Skriniar and De Vrij).
The four games in a row without goals conceded certainly cannot be a guarantee of how the next one will go, but they mark the discovery of a side of the team personality that a month ago the Lady certainly did not think she had. The decisive factor was to erase the individual mistakes that had undermined the start of the season, but also to build the fort far beyond the last bastion of the newly found Szczesny and the central couple (super in every assortment): Danilo’s balancing work has to do with it. , has to do with the criterion with which the sides play the role in the non-possession phase, has to do with the great screen work in front of the defense of a midfield that has found solidity around Locatelli and has to do with the pressing work that begins by the attackers without prima donnas to get out of it. Chiellini, out in St. Petersburg, is ready to take back a place at the center of the defense, siphoned for big events like this one.
SO IN MIDFIELD
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It is the department where Inzaghi has to deal with the main unknown: after skipping the Sheriff, will Calhanoglu be available at full capacity? When in doubt, a Vidal in great shape after scoring in the Champions League and eager to challenge his former team warms up the engines. On the other hand, the other interpreters have been discounted, with Darmian destined to resume the right run to ensure more balance and coverage in an area where Chiesa could act. To the Brozovic-Barella couple the task of acting as a filter, dictating the times and organizing the attacks against a median who suffers from high rhythms, while on the left the push of Perisic will be fundamental to create conditions of numerical superiority. The work of the outsiders will also be essential to give breadth to the maneuver, a fundamental prerequisite for trying to pierce a defense that in the latest releases has found the old solidity of the past.
Facilitated by the full confidence that gives the positive streak even in those who are on the sidelines of the rotations, the last week gave Allegri the possibility of counting on a now deeper midfield. The first name is that of Arthur, who in the final game with Roma and Zenit has dropped without inconvenience in the role of protagonist of the maneuver, offering a system based on restarts also a setter, good to manage but also to look for lighting in matches. blocked. The second name is that of McKennie, who in the three-man midfield seen in St. Petersburg has rediscovered the ancient taste for raids (while wasting too much), offering on the other hand reliability not taken for granted as the central brick of a five-man wall reinforced on the sides by the support of attacking outsiders. Right here Allegri gave substance to the midfield: having found the cornerstone in Locatelli, he did the rest, crowding him with men useful to give solidity. The brilliance will come, perhaps.
DEFENSE AGAINST ATTACK
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A bunker with a few too many cracks against an attack still in search of identity. The tried and tested trio Skriniar-De Vrij-Bastoni should make Inzaghi sleep relatively peacefully, but the figure relating to the goals conceded so far has raised alarm signals: the best defense of last season has already conceded 11 goals, collecting at least one goal in every game starting from the second day. The three goals scored last weekend at the Olimpico have exposed the limits and difficulties of a defense that suffers if caught in speed. This time there will be an attack that scores with the dropper (the ninth of the championship at 12 goals) and that once again will have to do without Paulo Dybala, always struggling with muscle problems and at most on the bench. But the Nerazzurri defense will have to pay close attention to the speed and thrusts of Chiesa, without forgetting other “centometrists” such as Cuadrado and Kulusevski. The other threat to Handanovic’s goal will be Morata, who has an average of 0.5 goals per game with Inter: four goals in eight games against the Nerazzurri for the Spaniard. If in the air game there should be no match considering the tonnage and centimeters of Inzaghi’s three power plants, the dangers can arrive in the strait and in open field conditions, where the black and white restarts can find fertile ground. Bastoni and Skriniar will have to pay particular attention to disengaging to stop any raids on the side lanes.
The fourth one to zero in a row is not only the hymn to the rediscovered Juventus defense, but also the lucidity of making a virtue of necessity when Allegri’s offensive resources are objectively scarce: from the farewell of Ronaldo, not replaced with a bomber, the absence of Dybala (who aims at the call-up with Inter), until the recent return of Morata, passing through the lack of goals from other offensive weapons (Kulusevski with Zenit scored the first goal in the tenth game of the season ) and production contributions from other departments (such as those that Max claimed earlier this season from Rabiot and McKennie). Some of these “will come”, some will not. Certainly, however, there is no longer someone with whom you knew you were going to start from 1-0 anyway. Allegri’s choice is that you have to win differently.
THE DUEL
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Sunday will also be the challenge between the two new souls of the fresh blue midfield champion of Europe: on the one hand Barella, the Nerazzurri “future captain”, on the other Locatelli, a hit on the Juventus summer market and already essential in Allegri’s median. . The Sardinian is now a leader in all respects, both in terms of technique and charisma: he is in fact the first Nerazzurri in terms of number of assists (already five, close to the record of seven last season) and it is clear that when he runs, he runs all the way. ‘Inter. Stretcher guarantees intensity by performing both phases very well: tireless in coverage but always punctual in the insertion phase. A few more goals are still missing, but it’s a matter of details. In a game with limited spaces and tight rhythms, Barella’s raids can blow the bank (especially exploiting the feeling exhibited with Dzeko and Darmian in one-two and overlaps). With Inzaghi he advanced the range of action by a few meters, but in the coverage phase he always gives the usual guarantees. Always a starter so far, he is one of Inzaghi’s “marathon runners” together with Brozovic (who only missed 40 ‘in the league and 6’ in the Champions League), yet he doesn’t seem to feel the fatigue. Even against Juve, he will be the engine of the Nerazzurri car.
There is too much quality in the blue median to claim the permanent position, but the same virtues with which Locatelli was able to carve out a place in the sun with Mancini are those that allowed him to take the heart of the Lady in a few weeks. Simplicity and personality, the presence of always knowing how to offer oneself as a point of reference, the flicker of the visionary passage and the ball with the tachometer, but above all (for how Allegri is laying the foundations of his new technical cycle) a lot of reliability in the non-possession phase, because the protection of the defense is not only a question of physicality which is undoubtedly a dowry of Manuel, but also to a large extent that sense of position that he certainly does not lack: among so many men with a more bombastic experience and international limelight, the man who turns on Max’s light is the latest addition.
October 21, 2021 (change October 21, 2021 | 15:28)
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