euro reaction: inter are terrible

last week, owing to the latest circus enveloping the life and times of a certain david robert joseph beckham, the bbc grabbed the rights to the milan derby. having seen only bits and pieces of both sides this season, largely because of the embargo currently preventing the screening of italian domestic football, i was eager to watch, especially ahead of the forthcoming tie between manchester united and inter. and so, i sat and watched the game - with my football-neutral flatmate in tow - and was stunned. stunned that the bbc had the gall to say it was a good game, and stunned by the ineptitude of the teams on show.

for milan, it was a case of a weak defence - kaladze at centre back anyone? - and leaving pato far too isolated in attack, so when they got possession it was immediately squandered; for inter, it was a case of being unable to pass the ball. time and again their lone tactic was to pump high balls to ibrahimovic and adriano, isolating kaladze and waiting for the knockdown, and it was exactly this that led to the stankovic goal. in the second half, however, when milan bolstered their attack and gave themselves more options, inter couldn't keep the ball and found it harder to get it back when it wasn't served up to their centre-backs on a plate.

and lo! after watching yesterday's game, it appears this was no mirage. inter simply cannot pass the ball; the midfield diamond of muntari, cambiasso, zanetti and stankovic is dreadful, and the shape doesn't provide enough options when they have the ball. the front two do not work hard enough, lack movement, and don't have the pace to stretch a defence. what inter needed last night was a fleet-footed attacker to run the channels down united's right flank, attacking a sluggish john o'shea and making a less than 100% jonny evans turn and run. instead, what did they have? long balls pumped towards the fat, ineffectual adriano and the lazy, ineffectual ibrahimavic. ferdinand and evans, despite being confronted with this serious bulk in front of them, approached the task with perfunctory ease, overpowering the lackadaisical pairing time and again.

the inter midfield, of course, did very little. muntari was invisible for the most part, and dejan stankovic was most notable for his constant moaning at the referee. javier zanetti, once a glorious talented right-back, is now a plodding, nothing player in midfield. only the wonderful esteban cambiasso - one of those real madrid transfer that you look back on with absolute amazement - deserved to be on the same pitch as manchester united. and it was he who took the game over for that short spell in the second half as inter found a second wind (or should that be first wind?). the argentine was excellent, breaking play up and picking his passes with a precision that would, in days past, befit the champions of italy.

of course, this revival was sparked only by manchester united becoming complacent; they lost their shape and passes started to go astray, and the game got scrappy. inter pulled zlatan out wide to attack o'shea and avoid the attention of rio ferdinand (who was immense throughout), which generated a modicum of success. but the performance of the italian champions merely underlined the sheer mediocrity that currently infests serie a, clearly inferior and consistently stretched by a united team with more verve, more incision, better passing and greater solidity.

for united, it must have been a frustrating night. ronaldo, who looked consistently dangerous, more so than he has in quite some time, should have put them ahead with one or more of his headed chances, and ryan giggs, authoring another imperious midfield display in what is now a virtuoso season, needed to clip the ball past julio cesar when rivas had served him up a golden chance. there was criticism of this united side, especially the inclusion of park over rooney, but the korean has had a very good season, showing a sense of craft and dynamism that he once lacked, and fully justified his selection (especially when you consider that rooney, returning from injury, may have struggled to last the 90 minutes). in fact, if there was one disappointment, that would have been dimitar berbatov, the bulgarian lacking even the deft touch you always assume you can rely on, and at times just drifting through the match.

obviously, after the game, jose mourinho said it was perfectly poised - the 0-0 should be celebrated, the implication being that it would only take a single away goal to change the complexion of the tie. but this is a notable change of tack for a man that was proclaiming his team to be the equal of united before the game, talking up zlatan as the best player in the world. these are now claims even the most strident inter fan would struggle to believe, let alone their arch-pragmatist boss. at this point, inter will be lucky to escape with a narrow defeat in the return leg.

blame all round at stamford bridge

after the opening weekend, your correspondant wrote about chelsea:

big phil is... absolutely, positively overrated.... and it is chelsea that is more likely to decline, with lampard and ballack both the wrong side of 30 & didier drogba increasingly injury prone. deco is truly one of my favourite players in world football - i thought barca were absolutely crazy to sell him - but it is difficult to imagine he will play as he did on sunday, week in, week out, in his first season in the premiership, at the age of 31 (as he will be in about a week's time). also, when you look at the squad - ridiculously overloaded with central midfielders and strikers - you can imagine them getting bogged down at times, which is exactly the reason they have been unsuccessfully chasing robinho.

alright, so it is a bit self-indulgent. but the reason i am quoting that is not to demonstrate my prescience or to laugh at the stunningly stupid pairing of hansen and shearer on match of the day (who both tipped chelsea to win the title after their destruction of pompey, but to illustrate why big phil can't be blamed for all of chelsea's ills.

big phil turned up at chelsea in the summer, faced with a squad in decline. for all that has been made of avram grant's achievements - a title only out of reach on the last day of the season, a penalty shoot out loss to manchester united - this cannot be in doubt; drogba was beginning to pick up the niggling injuries that would see him unfit for the bulk of this current season, claude makelele was clearly no longer the player he once was, and the squad had seen its incisors removed, the departures of damien duff and arjen robben (in particular) not properly compensated for. but it was a squad capable of overwhelming teams with its sheer physicality, and to grant's credit he seemed to maintain, on the pitch at least, the kind of fearsome, inextinguishable warrior spirit that made them such a redoubtable force under jose mourinho. it was some last hurrah.

this perilous decline cannot be blamed on grant or mourinho. i was often a vocal critic of the portuguese's transfer policy, especially early on, but as time past you began to doubt the accountability of the manager for those matters; as the cadre of advisors and staff multiplied, rumours swirled over many of the moves, with numerous players allegedly purchased on the insistence of someone other than mourinho. of course, what further clouds the subject is the obligatory press conference soundbites from jose, welcoming such luminaries as andrei shevchenko with the identical routine of acclaim and praise. however, we know that the transfer policy at stamford bridge has long been one of minimisation, since the fateful summer that brought claudio pizarro and florent malouda - both were clear symbols of the club thinking it could do things on the cheap as ambramovich tried to ween it from his chequebook.

this has continued ever since - nicolas anelka, for example, was an ill-thought panic buy, but remained cheaper than someone with genuine quality; tal ben-haim was someone never good enough and is now, more appropriately, at sunderland; belletti, despite the occasional wonder-goal, was the type of declining, flawed player you almost never see alex ferguson signing - and was alive and well in the scolari reign. mineiro was signed, as a free-agent, to back up mikel, and even when they clearly needed a wide midfielder (especially given joe cole's unfortunate recent injury) all they could muster was the loan signing of a player who will probably need a good deal of that short period to adapt to the premier league. deco arrived for £8m, a truly bizarre signing not only because of the multitude of options chelsea had in the middle, but because he was signed to a mere two-year deal (on massive wages, one presumes) despite the obvious fact he too would need time to acclimatise to the premier league.

the exception of course was jose bosingwa, who is looking less and less worth his £16.2m transfer fee with every passing game; combine him with deco and you have a thoroughly disappointing summer's business at stamford bridge. it can be presumed bosingwa was a recommendation of big phil, given his status as portugal manager and that the decision to recruit a right-back ahead of a winger was so counter-intuitive it must have been with a tactical plan in mind. and this is where the criticism of scolari begins.

scolari set out his chelsea team very much like his world cup winning brazil side from 2002 - the full backs providing width, what looked like three centre backs (with mikel dropping back from his nominal defensive midfield position), and then anything between 3 or 4 central attack-minded midfielders. in theory, this is a flexible formation that allows midfield runners to attack from bewildering angles; in practice it is a stultifying set up that, countered with ease by the premier league's better tacticians after early successes. it is something that reflects badly on big phil, whose main achievement, that world cup, is now rightly being put into proper context.

that brazil side wasn't particularly good, and in beating england, turkey and an awful german side from the quarter finals onward they demonstrated very little to suggest otherwise. against sides of any repute, in a world cup not marred by awful officiating, tactical ineptitude and (primarily) european exhaustion, it would not have been a world cup winning team. of course, given the disproportionate and inaccurate importance placed on international football, this triumph vaulted big phil into the upper echelon of world managers. his subsequent reign at the helm of the portuguese national team was characterised by respectful failure. his previous successes in brazilian club football were built less on that most spurious of concepts "samba football" (or whatever the hell people call it), but physicality and efficiency.

his pedigree most certainly did not befit his reputation. at chelsea he appeared out of his depth, tactically outclassed and incapable of handling the egos at work in the dressing room. the anecdote about how he departed the game against middlesbrough early, missing two late chelsea goals that won them the game, just so he could pick up his son from st pancras, speaks of a manager not really capable of leading a side; the instant and persistant pursuit of brazilian and portuguese players of a man uncomfortable with the league of nations style squad assembled at chelsea, pining for safety in what he knew best.

but he was hamstrung by the lack of planning at chelsea. the sporadic splurges had created an imbalanced squad, haemorraghing money as the "all-star" construction lead to an unsustainably high wage bill. too many big name on wages that were too high; not enough of the effective middle-class, the park ji-sungs and wes browns to fill out the squad, and too few of the dynamic youngsters, the da silva twins or the entire arsenal reserve side, to provide hope or gentle evolution as the inevitable decline of first-teamers set in. for all big phil's faults, he was still having to play florent malouda on the wing, because he had no alternatives. and as for the people that would ask about drogba and anelka together, i would ask how you envisage those two playing together? and in a central pair, who is manned on the flanks and which of the lampard/mikel/ballack/deco bottleneck do you dislodge?

of course, a victory over near-bankrupt championship relegation candidates watford restores a degree of false hope - chelsea won with drogba and anelka together! the fact is, these two are an unlikely couple and will almost certainly struggle to tessalate. but even though scolari's failure to motivate the loathsome didier drogba isn't exactly his fault - the ivorian couldn't be more wilfully childish if he tried - if he does come into form then chelsea, and whoever is in the team, automatically get more effective. if the battering ram comes back, chelsea will improve. ultimately though, this is not a side that will recover to win the title; they simply are not good enough. and to blame phil for that is harsh in the extreme.