Minutes after Inter Milan had beaten Napoli 3-1 at the San Siro last Saturday night, Inter's new coach of just three days, Marco Tardelli, presented himself for the ritual post-match news conference. Despite his formal navy blazer and grey trousers, Tardelli looked on the dishevelled side as he wiped the sweat from his forehead.
"Some of you lot should try sitting on that bench out there," joked Tardelli, when asked what had got him so hot and bothered.
Inter's new coach, appointed last week in the wake of the sacking of Marcello Lippi, was telling no lies. Put simply, the post of coach at Inter represents the hottest seat in contemporary Italian soccer. Since Giovanni Trapattoni left the job in 1991, Inter have employed no less than nine different coaches, all of them established winners both in Italy and abroad. Three days earlier, speaking on the day of his official appointment, Tardelli had neatly summed up the challenge facing him, saying: "Inter is simply a club that cannot exist in the limbo of football. Inter is either in hell or in paradise".
At 46 and with 10 years of coaching at various levels behind him, Tardelli should, in theory, be ready for the job. After all, since his glory days as a 1982 World Cup winning player, he has had experience in Italy's Division Two with Como and Cesena and, more importantly, as coach to the Italian under-21 side that won this summer's European Championships in Slovakia. On top of that, Tardelli has just returned from the Sydney Olympics where he coached that same under-21 side to the quarter-finals, where they were eliminated by Spain.
On his first day at the club last week, Tardelli was asked what Inter needed to get themselves back on course after a disappointing start to the season which saw them lose their opening Serie A game away to little Reggina and, more painfully, saw them eliminated from the Champions League at the preliminary round stage by modest Swedish side Helsingborg: "To win, to win, to win and that'll be enough", he replied.
It is tempting to argue that, having got that initial win against Napoli, Tardelli is already on the way to setting things to rights - tempting but misleading for at least two reasons. Firstly, newly promoted Napoli are perhaps the weakest side in Serie A. Secondly, the pressures at Inter will start up again if Inter get beaten away to Udinese next Saturday.
If it is easy to pinpoint the problems encountered by Tardelli's immediate predecessor Lippi (the early season losses this year, and injuries to key players such as Brazilian Ronaldo and Italian international Christian Vieri, not to mention a series of rows with "star" players such as Roberto Baggio and Uruguyan Alvaro Recoba last season), it is a rather more complex business identifying precisely why the Inter job has proven so difficult to hold down over the last decade.
The team's past tradition, the confusing influence of too many friends and "counsellors" to owner, petrol millionaire Massimo Moratti, and the fact that while Inter struggled, their cross-town rivals, AC Milan, went through the 1990s as one of the strongest club sides in the world, all certainly added to the pressures.
From a purely Irish viewpoint, it was interesting to see that as Tardelli set out on his task of picking up the multi-national player pieces at Inter, he named Ireland's Robbie Keane in his first selection. For the time being, that is the best news available concerning Keane, since the Irishman had a slightly disappointing game against Napoli, missing two good chances, before being replaced in the 66th minute by Recoba.
Keane's overall workrate and attitude, however, fit in with Tardelli's requirements, at least judging by his handling of the Italy under-21 side. Furthermore, with the injured Ronaldo out (probably for all of this season), with Vieri still not back from injury, with Recoba at odds with both the club and Inter fans over the renewal of his contract, and with Turk Hakan Sukur sorely out of form, Keane may well remain a first choice selection.
As for the rest, much will depend on the youthful energy and ambition of Tardelli, on the skill and wisdom of the side's real leader, French World Cup and Euro 2000 winning defender, Laurent Blanc, and - why not - on fortune's fickle wheel. Watch this space.
Email: pagnew@aconet.it
