Some things were just never meant to be. Falling into that category is the relationship between Gian Piero Gasperini and Inter Milan, which ended after a tenure of just four matches. He did well with a Genoa side that had limited resources, but when his side finished 10th in Serie A despite spending on new players, we should have perhaps seen that Gasperini was a man with a ceiling; he's best suited to a specific kind of job. He can keep a bad side up and he can turn a mid-table side into a Europa League contender, but managing at the top level is a bit over his head.
Claudio Ranieri: The Right Choice For A Reeling Inter Milan Side
The cliche “always a bridesmaid, never a bride” is more or less a good summation of the career of Claudio Ranieri. Right now, for Inter Milan, being the bridesmaid will do just fine.
There’s no shame in that. Being a mid-lower table specialist in Serie A still puts Gasperini at the 95th percentile or thereabouts for professional football managers in world football. He’s an excellent manager who has had a fantastic career, but Inter Milan was a completely different level. The wondrous world of Sneijders and Forlans was a foreign one to Mr. Gasperini. He’s departed, and he’s taken his entertaining - but limited and relatively inflexible - 3-4-3 system with him.
Enter Claudio Ranieri, a man who also has a bit of a ceiling. The 59-year-old has managed numerous prestigious clubs in Italy and abroad to some degree of success, but has never really broken through to the upper echelon of the profession. He's guided Chelsea FC, Valencia, Juventus and Roma to impressive finishes in Champions League places in their respective leagues, but he has failed to win all of the English Premier League, La Liga and Serie A in his career.
When Ranieri left Valencia in 1999, Chelsea in 2004, and Juventus in 2009, all three clubs were in good standing. The latter two felt that they needed new blood to become league champions and Champions League contenders, but Ranieri did not do a bad job in either case. He just wasn’t quite the man to guide them towards their lofty aspirations.
The 2009-10 season with Roma was similar to his last with both Chelsea and Juventus. The team looked like a title contender all season long, but eventually failed to seal the deal and finished in second place, this time behind Jose Mourinho’s treble winning Inter side. Ranieri was not sacked, as that edition of Roma didn’t have quite the expectations (or budget) of previous two most famous employers. Things started reasonably well in the 2010-11 season for Roma, but right around the new year, things completely fell apart for the Giallorossi.
On January 9, 2011, Roma fans got their first sign that the wheels were potentially falling off the bus in a 2-1 loss to Sampdoria. While this would not have been an embarrassing result a year prior, the Blucerchiati had recently sold both Giampaolo Pazzini and Antonio Cassano as they went from having the best strike pairing in Italy to lacking in firepower. This game was hardly lost due to bad selections or tactics on Ranieri's part, though. Instead, Julio Cesar gave away a penalty and was sent off in the 55th minute, completely changing the game. This is hardly something the manager can be blamed for.
Things got better from there, though, at least for about a month. Roma recorded wins over Lazio and Juventus over the next month, moving themselves up the table. Things were starting to look up for Ranieri and his men. Then, the Inter game happened, starting a string of four consecutive disastrous performances that would lead to Ranieri's termination.
In one of the wildest games of the year, Inter defeated Roma 5-3 at the San Siro. Without his best true holding midfielder David Pizzaro* and Roma icon Francesco Totti, Ranieri had to improvise. Marco Borrielo and Mirko Vucinic started up top with Jeremy Menez behind them. Fabio Simplicio and Simone Perrotta were forced to play a little more defense than they're used to. Daniele de Rossi had to sit more than he was used to. Jeremy Menez, Roma's trequarista, had a shocker on the night.
*I don’t think that “holding midfielder” is a proper categorization for Daniele de Rossi. If you feel that I am completely off base in this regard, feel free to email me with your argument.
With Inter leading 2-1, Nicolas Burdisso gave away a penalty and was shown a straight red card. Everything went bonkers from there and Inter ended up winning the match 5-3. The fans were unhappy, but what could Ranieri really do? He was missing two of his stars, his trequarista had a bad game, and one of his central defenders gave away an incredibly stupid penalty, getting himself sent off in the process. There might not be a manager in the world who could beat Inter Milan given these circumstances.
Roma's next loss came under a similar scenario. Again, Ranieri did not have Pizzaro or Totti. Again, one of his central defenders gave away an awful penalty. Again, Jeremy Menez was poor. Napoli deservedly won 2-0, and while Ranieri might have been able to make different decisions to win the game, he certainly didn't make any egregious errors.
Then, Roma fell apart. In the next two consecutive games, his team gave away leads against arguably inferior opposition. His team fell 3-2 at Estadio Olimpico to Shakhtar Donestk in the Champions League, then gave away a 3-0 lead to lose 4-3 against Genoa four days later. That match was Ranieri’s undoing, and he was understandably sacked.
Like the previous two losses, Roma did not have an obvious tactical flaw in either the Shakhtar or Genoa match. Ranieri didn’t make any selections or substitutions that were completely baffling or unjustifiable. When it comes to tangible information that is available to the public, Ranieri did not make any severe mistakes in any of these four matches.
Whatever was wrong with Roma either has to do with something the public does not know or is intangible. Perhaps Ranieri does not know how to properly motivate his players. Perhaps his defense making mental errors for four straight games after a year and a half of consistently defending well has to do with bad coaching. Perhaps this is exactly why Ranieri is the king of second place finishers and never a champion.
But, we can’t know that, and it’s irresponsible for football pundits to imply that Ranieri can’t motivate his players or that he doesn’t have the bottle to guide the best teams to glory. What we do know is that he’s made a lot of fantastic tactical decisions in the past. He’s left most of the teams he’s managed in good standing. He is an experienced manager who, despite that atrocious four game run of form, generally gets good enough results out of his teams.
Inter Milan do not need a savior at the moment. They do not need to find then next Jose Mourinho, and even if they did, they sure as hell aren’t going to find him in the middle of September. This is a talented, but not elite club whose goal needs to be to finish in the top three and qualify for the Champions League, while making the knockout stages of this year’s competition. If Inter needs a complete reboot to become the side that Mourinho’s Inter was, then so be it, but club reboots do not come at the end of September. If the team needs blowing up, they need blowing up in June.
Right now, Inter need to salvage their season and remain an attractive place for great young players and managers to come to ply their trades. Claudio Ranieri is not a miracle worker and he won’t be winning a treble, but he’s exactly the man to do what Inter need doing this season.
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