Mazzarri will be well aware of the tasks awaiting him at Inter.
The managerial soap opera at Inter finally reached its zenith when coach Andrea Stramaccioni’s tortured reign with the club was put to an end last Friday.
After missing out on European football altogether for their first time in 15 years, while a lowly ninth-placed Serie A finish condemned Inter to the ignominy of contending in the Coppa Italia play-offs in August, the announcement provided a merciful bullet to the ex-Primavera boss’ stewardship of a team increasingly engulfed in crisis.
Alarmed with how rapidly public opinion had swung against his patronage of the Nerazzurri once the gravity of her struggles had sunken in, Massimo Moratti immediately sniffed an opportunity to arrest the slide, and seized it when he simultaneously declared Walter Mazzarri would be installed at the outfit’s helm, effective immediately.
Napoli’s former trainer seemed the ideal candidate in all likelihood, a perception reinforced the moment he declared a renewal with the Serie A runners-up would not be forthcoming. Rebuffing a handsome salary to extend his celebrated spell with the ambitious southerners, Mazzarri’s decision arrived as a serious insult on the part of the Partenopei support. Aurelio De Laurentiis summed up the sour grapes when he alluded: “Mazzarri? You can’t save marriage with money when the woman wants to sleep with another.”
Snubbing the glitz of confidently challenging for the Scudetto and playing in the Champions League for the thankless, menial job of rebuilding Inter next season did occur as nothing short of the bizzarre at the point the 51-year-old was appointed in charge of the fallen San Siro giants.
But yet in being able to imprint his mark where he goes lies the core essence behind Mazzarri’s yearning to compete; the same remarkable drive synonymous in the first place with transforming Napoli from the laughing stock it had become under Roberto Donadoni into genuine title contenders.
Rekindling enthusiasm at San Siro will just be the first aspect of Mazzarri’s job.
That Inter represented uncharted territory cannot be understated in his choice. Deriding him for his supposed delusion in swapping dugouts when Napoli were approaching the peak of her powers would only be a grave act of underestimating Mazzarri’s innate desire of seeking out new impetus to conquer afresh.
After all, losing the allure of leading the San Paolo side was a circumstance he readily admitted to in his final press conference as coach: “At this point I think it is only right to either change scenery or take some time off. I’m convinced that if I stayed longer, certain members of the team wouldn’t have felt the same fire. Naples is a wonderful place, but I wanted a new challenge.”
And Inter will be the grateful ones to reap the rewards. Lying in midtable anonymity could be made to work for themselves as it did in recent campaigns for Juventus and Fiorentina, and if there is indeed a solution to be found, Mazzarri has the right characteristics and experience to uncover it.
In stark contrast to Stramaccioni’s passive approach to daily management and tactics, the incoming boss’s proactive nature and charisma – once brought to bear when inspiring Napoli’s feats beyond their ordinary means – could glean the sought response from his newest charges, returning enthusiasm and belief onto the faces at Appiano Gentile.
His predecessor left behind vestiges of the winning 3-5-2 he had hoped to build before injuries wrecked his grand visions, and now Mazzarri, a true exponent of the system, crucially arrives with the know-how and the aptly-dubbed ‘anti-injury wizard’ Giuseppe Pondrelli in tow to see those plans to ultimate fruition.
Packing the iron fists necessary to trim the fat by axing the underachieving and overpaid from the squad, the Inter revolution will truly be underway once players to his tastes, such as Radja Nainggolan and Juan Zuniga, make their entrances.
The light is not yet at the end of their tunnel as far as the public is concerned, but via Mazzarri, Inter can at last begin bearing down an appropriate path of redemption, as president of the Italian Football Managers’ Association, Renzo Ulivieri, attested to: “I believe he will not go wrong this year. He enters a difficult environment to reconstruct the club, which is a difficult task to do well, but Mazzarri in difficult challenges is to be exalted.”
Lavished with only a fraction of the patience and monetary support Moratti showered on Stramaccioni before it gave out, the feeling is that Mazzarri could work nothing short of a miracle in the space of a very short time. Defecting up north after boring of Napoli’s increasingly routine upward surge, the man of the hour has at long last chanced upon another holy grail of challenges, thus forcing him to bring all his coaching stimuli to bear again – to his utter fulfillment.
Follow Jeremy Lim on Twitter: @JLCalcio
