Gazzetta: Inter and Conte, top rivals—what happened at Maradona… | OneFootball

Gazzetta – Inter and Conte: Each Other’s Number 1 Enemy! What Really Happened at the Maradona…

Neither the long hours that have now passed since the Maradona psychodrama nor the cake prepared at Appiano for Cristian Chivu’s 45th birthday have helped. The day after, nothing has restored Inter’s good mood or removed that sense of irritation with which the Nerazzurri left Naples on Saturday night: what happened during the match still hasn’t been swallowed, especially the penalty that even the AIA confirmed was a mistake, but what was liked even less were the heated exchanges after the game. In the Nerazzurri club’s sights is always Conte, the venomous ex who snatched the last Scudetto with his barricaded Napoli. He’s the coach who made the big match sway to his liking, as only a ringmaster does with his lasso: this too is a virtue in the hand-to-hand fight for the title.

If the skirmishes and insults between Antonio Conte and his former protégé Lautaro were quickly downgraded to “on-field matters,” on the contrary, Inter does not intend to overlook the subsequent statements by the Neapolitan coach, which were still considered very serious yesterday, both in form and content. From dragging in his colleague Chivu, who, unlike everyone else, chose the noble path of fair play by staying out of any controversy, to directly attacking Marotta, “the executive who escalates things,” everything is considered inappropriate at Nerazzurri headquarters. And unfair, especially in light of the presidential statements on the Mariani case: “Napoli’s penalty influenced the match, we need clarity, Rocchi had said ‘no more soft penalties…’,” said Marotta, without taking anything away from the performance of McTominay and company. When those words were relayed to him, Antonio loaded the bazooka: “I would never have allowed, as a coach, one of my executives—in this case, the president—to intervene like that. It also diminishes the coach; I have always defended myself.” To tell the truth, when he exploded on TV, it seems Conte was convinced that his Romanian colleague would not speak to the media: he thought only his former executive, well-known between Turin and Milan, would take the stage. The man with whom he has lived this undulating Italian story, made of farewells and returns, brief idylls and long conflicts.

Now each sees the other as enemy number one, but Conte and Inter also loved each other, even if only briefly and never truly completely, during the complicated 2019-21 biennium, crippled by Covid. Besides winning the 19th Scudetto with a tank-like team, the foundations for future successes were indeed laid. In short, Conte’s merits in Inter’s growth path are fully recognized on the tenth floor of Viale della Liberazione, but relations between the parties have long since been reset, an inevitable distancing after the stormy separation that opened the doors to Inzaghi’s four-year tenure. The definitive break occurred in May 2021, when the Scudetto was in the trophy case, but the club’s finances were in the red. Antonio did not accept a supposed downsizing, thinking the Nerazzurri were imploding in the Chinese bubble. The consensual separation, full of tension and unspoken words, was nonetheless sweetened by a huge severance package: about 7 million net to the coach. Between Suning’s last three years and Oaktree’s first, however, reality turned out differently from the former coach’s prediction: the team remained competitive despite a plummeting budget and finally found European glory with Inzaghi. Despite the thrill of Simone’s second star, domestic results post-Conte have not been at the same level. It’s no coincidence that the Neapolitan coach slyly pointed this out on Saturday: “Inter is the strongest, they could have won more in these four years…” Here’s another phrase that left a bitter taste for the Nerazzurri, among other things, also because everyone at Inter remembers certain outbursts from the former coach: from the night of the comeback suffered in Dortmund in the Champions League in 2019 to the draw with Parma in an empty San Siro with a penalty not given to Perisic in 2020, time and again the Inter-era Conte demanded (in his own way) urgent intervention from the executives. In practice, the exact opposite of the thesis he put forward on Saturday. The best part is that new chapters will soon be written in this drama: there’s a new Scudetto up for grabs, and everyone wants to win it by any means necessary.

Carlo Gioia

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇮🇹 here.