Serie A 2009/10 preview part III (Inter/Ibrahimovic rant)

INTER:

Inter has been a very easy team to predict and break down for quite a few years now.
This year however it looks a lot more difficult and I'm not really sure what will happen which I'm sure this preview will reflect.

For starters. removing Ibrahimovic from this team spells huge change and the right tactical adjusments are very needed but what they'll actually be I'm not sure about at all.
Fortunately for Inter fans, in Jose Mourinho they have a brilliant coach with a great track record of turning teams into consistent winners.
To make it perfectly clear despite all the brutal misconception from mainly the english speaking media, Zlatan Ibrahimovic is one of the best players in the world and quite frankly irreplaceable.

It's been quite humorous if tediously predictable to observe the british media's reaction of more or less total bewilderment following the Zlatan/Eto'o deal.
What is going on these people thought? Samuel Eto'o the much better player is being swapped for someone not even that good and on top of it they give up the staggering amount of 46 million Euro + former Arsenal great Alexander Hleb, just to get him!

Even more predictable, sadly enough, the followup reaction to that, the usual combination of ignorance and arrogance from football journalists so removed from reality that they're quite certain they know better than the football mind of man just responsible for creating what last season was one of the best teams in history, and without much thought at all more than willing to call that man out on the silliness that was the thought (what thought surely?!) behind his transfer.
Overall it must be one of the most shining examples of any doubt about the utter wrongness of the collective assessment by a group of little knowing journalists, being swept away by the amazing dose of reality that was the astronomical value of a player, THAT they didn't really rate.

Did these people even watch Ibrahimovic regularly. At Ajax? In Serie A for Juventus and Inter?
Every year where he was a key player in securing the championship. Or THE key player.
Even at his so called bad year for Juve he was actually pretty good.
That the team he is on is basically winning the championship every year, shouldn't that at least appeal to what's generally very results oriented thinking.

Instead, enter the big game myth. This or that player, in this case Ibrahimovic, isn't a "big game player".
Often used as the last straw to grab onto when in denial about whatever great player's qualities, it's been wrongly used over and over.
Of the top of my head everyone of these players I remember not being so called "big game players" at various stages in their careers:
Ronaldo was not a "big game" player cause his team lost a World Cup final to a great France team?
Zidane was not a "big game" player. cause omg Juventus lost a championship league final where he was actually injured.
Christian Ronaldo was not a "big game player" cause if he was why didn't Manchester United win the Champions League every year?
And right now Zlatan definitely is NOT a "big game" player cause all he does is win one league championship after another. And you're obviously a much better player if you're good in one game instead of 38!

Of course it's all pure nonsense constructed using misconceptions and tiny sample sizes.
What makes Ibrahimovic excellent is his strenght/technique combination and when on top of that he is blessed with great vision, creativity and flair, you have a truly unique player who can both be a great striker, a great playmaker as well as an effective targeman or simply a moving-around, versatile forward.

The only things really I can see Eto'o at this point in his career doing better than Ibrahimovic is the accelaration on the first meters and that quickly released out of nowhere great shot of his, that's resulted in many goals.
Ibrahimovic however is a much better passer and more creative. To a point that could make Barca this year the best attacking team that we've ever seen. Yes I said it.
He is also stronger which really helps against teams (like against Chelsea where Eto'o was useless) with a strong physical team defense, and perhaps most importantly he is much more durable and unlike Eto'o can carry a team throughout a season.

It just wasn't for fun or out of charity they gave Eto'o plus tons of money away to secure Ibrahimovic. It's because Guardiola rightly think of Zlatan Ibrahimovic as being on a higher level than Samuel Eto'o and that Zlatan Ibrahimovic makes the team better than Samuel Eto'o does.

So with almost no hope of replacing such an elite player (the only right here, right now option I see is Mourinho darling, Didier Drogba) Inter for the first time since calciopoli crippled their nearest rivals, have some real questionmarks.

On paper they still look like the strongest and deepest team but when they can't replace the great player who in many ways carried them, they're in a situation where they are forced to try and do new things, and with that comes the uncertainty.

Not helping at all is that they'll be without, for some time, one of best central midfielders in the world, Esteban Cambiasso.

One thing that's worked great for Inter is the midfield diamond but while that midfield worked well with Ibrahimovic, more uncertain is how well it would work with a front duo of Eto'o and Milito.
Not that Milito and Eto'o are bad. Quite the opposite. They're both excellent strikers and one of the strongest duos around, easily. But they're two strikers who usually feed of a nice passing game. Providing the excellent finishing touches, TO that.
Eto'o as we all know for years now at Barcelona but Milito as well for Genoa and before that for Zaragoza.
Remember, the sadly way too short time, before it all went wrong, when Zaragoza had one of the most exciting attacks in Europe?
The coach was attacking mastermind Víctor Fernández and through dazzling passing and technical play, players like Pablo Aimar, D'Alessandro and Milito excelled.

For Inter, Muntari on the other hand is someone who is not a very good passer. Stankovic and the evergreen Zanetti aren't bad but not very fast anymore. The same is the case with Motta and Vieira.
The one midfield player in the diamond who is both a good passer and pretty fast is in fact Cambiasso. Mostly with a defensive role and now unfortunately for Inter out injured.

It's hard to imagine Milito and Eto'o not scoring goals but that midfield in a diamond formation will not provide them with the greatest of service.

It's not all bad of course. The midfield obviously has a lot of other qualities making it very effective and able to get the better of a lot of teams. They just can't rely on the qualities they don't have, being provided by Ibrahimovic anymore.
Enter Mourinho's (rare) call for a trequartista and the various on-going speculation surrounding players such as Deco and now Wesley Sneijder.

If that doesn't materialize putting the 4-4-2 diamond to rest looks likely and even if Sneijder in fact would join, another system might be preferred by Mourinho.

Some sort of version of his abandoned last season 4-3-3 trident attack is definitely an option and would mean the central midfielders behind could have jobs more suiting their strenghts too.
Work really hard. Make runs without the ball, play more direct and cover for the immense Maicon and his runs forward.
Have Maicon be a key to the attack instead of them.

The problem with that trident is the current characteristics of the forwards.

Both Eto'o and Milito have previously in their younger days been able to do well at times in wide-forward roles but especially with Eto'o I wonder if he is still able to do that. That was a role exclusively reserved for Henry at Barca the last few years.
Milito at least has tremendous movement and can definitely be part of a flexible forward line.
But then is whoever the third part reliable enough to maintain the right balance
Would one of Eto'o/Milito have to see the bench in this system?

Quaresma and Mancini's collective hopelessnes (drunken Adriano played his part too) was of course a main reason the system was put to bed last season, but at least one of these would have to be brought back in at least occasionaly for this system to have effective width.
Mancini I almost can't see it happening for, but for Quaresma at least there is realistic hope of a comeback. He is just too young still, and too talented not to make any positive contribution ever again.

Main candidate for the leftside would of course be Balotelli. He has all the talent and upside in the world but is still extremely erratic and immature, resulting in very up and down play.
Outsiders would be David Suazo, back from loan at Benfica (likely just a backup instead of the departed Cruz and Crespo) and talented Marko Armautovic who's playing characteristics have drawn some comparisons to a young Zlatan, and if his ability to play out wide that's been talked about in Holland is for real, plus considering his size, could be just what the doctor ordered for a Mourinho style 4-3-3.
He has struggled with injuries though, so realistically a contribution from him is not something just around the corner.

In the back goalkeeper Julio Cesar has just kept improving and last season was the best keeper in Serie A.
The back-four itself has a lot of experience and the injury concerns that comes with that.
Depth is definitely needed and all in all I think they got it.
Lucio has been brought in and should enjoy playing for a much better defensive team than where he came from, even if what he still enjoys the most is actually taking part of the attacking play! Samuel when healthy can still do a good job on a well balanced side and even though he is an idiot,to a lesser extent the same is the case for dirtiest player in the game Materazzi.
More likeable and better is Chivu, but he of course is also injured a lot.

An interesting case is Ivan Cordoba who has been one of my favorite defenders to watch for many years now.
The way he through amazing instincts and agility have overcome lack of size is something quite unique nowadays for a central defender and throughout it's been great to watch.

Worth watching: Davide Santon: The wonderboy himself has from day one looked extremely impressive and basically within minutes of watching, this was one of the best in the world at his position to me! And he wasn't even playing on what's his natural right side which of course is occupied by Maicon.
He's simply got it all at just 19, and a possible future Maldini or Bergomi is of course a must watch.
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I'm still feeling the bitterness of missing round one yesterday. Genoa-Roma especially sounded like it was a great game. But I'm of course not abandoning Serie A, so therefore more to come later.

In the EPL tonight, Liverpool against Aston Villa is an interesting game and I definitely plan to watch that.

Football/Soccer seaon (finally!): First entry

So the european football season has now finally begun!

About time too after weeks and weeks of crazy transfer rumors and even crazier transfers has left me starving for actual action.

So naturally this weekend I watched a lot!

Things started of very slow with the second half of the Italian Super Cup. And on what was a crappy stream I'm not sure how much I have to offer there about the game itself but it's a nice excuse for a little Inter rambling:

I'm not sure Mourinho is fully set yet on whether he will be using the for Inter very successful 4-4-2 diamond or his own beloved anti-dutch 4-3-3, but one luxury Inter has is a lot of depth at most positions and Mourinho really has a lot of options.
I think even if it can seem very unlike Mourinho that within the 4-4-2 diamond he recognizes that an elite creative player in front of Cambiasso is needed to take that system to a level that's better than just being able to best what in the recent post-calciopoli years has been a very weakened Serie A.
At least compared to what were the recent glory days of italian domination with at times as much as seven clubs being among the best in Europe.
An elite creative player needed to reach that 10 percent chance he recently claimed they have right now of winning the elusive European Cup.

Really with a solid cast of quality defensive or just very capable two-way players the diamond could quite easily afford say a Deco (Van Der Vaart and Sneijder have also been mentioned) when surrounded by guys like Cambiasso and a rotating supporting cast featuring the likes of the resurgent Thiago Motta, Stankovic, Muntari and last but not least the ageless Javier Zanetti, without comprimising the defensive side of things but actually strengthening the overall balance of the team.

Ideally Mourinho would probably still prefer his effective 4-3-3 system where an effective attack is in place without ever compromising the defense and I think he secretly hopes that players like Amautovic, Suarez and an improving Balotelli can succed where players like Mancini and Quaresma failed so hard that middle of the season he had to give the system entirely up.
If the Mourinho 4-3-3 at some point again becomes the permanent fixture I'll give my very long take on it since I find it quite fascinating how the primarely most attacking system here is turned into a very calculating defensive one.

But the Super Cup itself? What did I see? Other than very bad picture quality, not much.

Well Eto'o looked kinda good. Not very 36yearoldish which I suspect is closer to his real age than the 28 his passport so wrongly claims.

Yes he will be good when healthy and Inter have a lot of forward depth so they will be in no way as dependant on him like they were on now departed Ibrahimovic.
It will especially be interesting to see Diego Milito finally get a chance at a big club.
One he definitely deserves after years of excellent play.

Then it was time for what was a very grandiose Bundesliga opening. Live on national german tv and they even had an opening ceremony!
This was after all a tremendous success last season with enormous crowds filling very good post German World Cup facilities and almost shameless attacking play from just about everyone making just about every german understandably very excited about his league.
Last season every single top team on average let in more than one goal per game and that's just crazy!
This was very very open play and if as a starting striker you didn't net good double figures what an utter failure you were:
There was however no failure whatsoever from champions Wolfsburg's attacking duo up front of Dzeko and Grafite, or should I say trio cause Misimovic with his creativity was a huge part of it, and they just couldn't stop scoring even if they tried and the younger of the two, Dzeko attracted a lot of attention from various European top clubs.
The fact that a club like Wolfsburg resisted pressure to sell to traditional giants like AC Milan, that alone speaks volumes and they deserve a lot of credit for it.

The opening game itself actually wasn't that open and perhaps, perhaps not(!), a sign of what Wolfsburg will face this season. What I think an 80 goals scored attacking machine SHOULD face this season.
Stuttgart came out with a defensive gameplan and in large parts of the 90 minutes controlled things very well with plenty of people working behind the ball minimizing space.
For a while they were even creating the better chances. Making excellent use of the qualities of new signing Pogrebnyak up front and some very nice looking two-way play from Sami Khedira from behind.
On the defensive side of things "Aston Villa legend" and now VBF captain Thomas Hitzlsperger did mostly a great job on Misimovic while Alexander Hleb on the forward side of things looked like he still has some ways to go before returning to his old impressive form.

Sadly one slip up is all it takes against this good an attack and for the first time really there wasn't instant pressure on Misimovic and he was left with some actual space, he took matters into his own hands and just outside the penalty area fired a nice shot past the Stuttgart keeper and in many ways that was that really.

Stuttgart like they simply had to now tried to attack, but before getting anything going really, was very predictably punished for the space now left behind.
Last season's top scorer Grafite had a one on one situation with a defender that he easily won with part power, part technique and made it 2-0. Game over!

In between my main focus on Serie A, the English Premier League and La Liga I don't really know how much Bundesliga I'll be able to squeeze into my very busy sports addiction scheduele, but just like its total opposite, the lately quite defensive French League, I'll definitely watch out for interesting games on the horizon. And hopefully write about them too!

I don't know either if I'll do an organized actual preview of anything either, the leagues I mean, or more take things as they come and go from there.
Watch some games every week and analyze from that. That way I also think I'll eventually have touched upon a lot of the interesting transfers that's been taking place.

Finally, I of course also watched the Charity Shield game.
Everytime basically the top teams from England face eachother it's a must watch these days. They're all european elite and the level of play is generally very high and therefore great to watch.
This was extra interesting because it would be a first look at Ancelotti's Chelsea and how would that constellation work?

It's too early to conclude much from one match of course and that happened to be especially the case in this game where I found myself concluding completely different things from each half.

The first half was in some ways a worst case scenario for what the Chelsea/Ancelotti partnership could result in and it actually brought back otherwise long forgotten memories of Ancelotti back in the day when he came to Juventus continuing with the exact same style and tactics he had used on what was his quite different Parma team.

Now of course here we have a Chelsea team COMPLETELY different from Ancelotti's AC Milan yet what did I see?
Unbelievably in that first half, Chelsea was kind of looking like Milan. Stylewise as well as tactically.
The ball was passed around quite a bit in their own half. That doesn't have to be a bad thing if you have Andrea Pirlo but with Jon Obi Mikel it's a different story.
Ivanovic on rightback looked like he had been asked to do a Cafu impression with the guy who might have been able to do that on the bench, Bosingwa, Ivanovic struggled mightely.
Even the always superb Essien, for many years now easily one of the best players in the world, struggled and couldn't defend the wing very effectively.
That's understandable when it's C. Ronaldo but this was Nani and he quite easily exploited what was a lack of Chelsea balance in that first half.
In order for that midfield diamond with its lack of width to work against this good a 4-4-2, with lots of width, possession needs to be quality and the ball not given away. The fullbacks creating width not getting caught forwardish on their heels.
But Chelsea does not have the players to substain that high level of possession (though I won't rule out Deco and Zhirkov contributing there) so ball was lost and the result was a very uncharacteristic unbalanced Chelsea defense.
Great job Carlo!
Then came the second half and it was more like same old Chelsea.
Whether it was player or coach adjustment I of course can't now, but play became much more direct with deeper passing and if the ball was lost it was sure to be lost deep in the opponent's half where it doesn't matter much and you can obtain solid defensive positioning while not constantly being on your backheels.
Generally when Chelsea gets direct passes to their players in around the penalty area, bad things tends to happen to the opponent.
That's where players like Lampard, Ballack, Malouda, Anelka and of course especially Drogba, the prime weapon, are effective and players around them benefit resulting in scoring chances (even for someone like Cavalho).
No need to pass the ball around in their own half. Get it up there and let them do their thing!

That's what they generally did in that second half and it resulted in a couple of goals.

It will be interesting to see which of the two halves we'll see the most of or if some sort of effective middleground can be found. Maybe Anelka playing a different role than being a pure striker or maybe just another midfielder in there to counter all the 4-4-2 width Ancelotti's system will now face in England.
I did think Hiddink found that great ground of playing to his team's strenghts but if Ancelotti goes the Scolari way and ignores his team's actual strenghts then it's a golden opportunity for a title lost, against rivals, who unlike Chelsea, have all lost key players.

Manchester United of course I still expect to replace at least some of the world class they've lost with the departures of Tevez and Ronaldo. Something that just hasn't happened yet.
I think both David Silva and Kun Aguero who there have both been speculations about could put them over the top and despite, as I'm writing this rumors seemingly dying down, I'll still be suprised if there isn't a major signing sooner rather than later.

Can a team not replacing two such great players really win the title against what are the strongest top 4-5 in Europe?

I don't think the Charity Shield provided much of an answer to that question, and a lot of it I guess will be how Liverpool and Arsenal react to their own losses of key players (and Chelsea to their new manager).

All in all the EPL with it's 4 or 5 horse race, where others are just 2 or 3 horse races, looks very unpredictable, so we shall see and I'll definitely be watching.