The coach complains about the reduced use of home-grown players in Serie A, but in his Nerazzurri past there is only one match with foreigners. And three blues on the bench…
The alarm raised by Roberto Mancini is concrete, a well-known problem for some years with which the technical stewards have increasingly to deal with. This is why natives like Mateo Retegui are naturalized, and for this reason in the Third Millennium, qualifying for a World Cup has become an obstacle course rather than an obligatory path but with a rather obvious outcome. However, by rewinding the tape to eight years ago, one can recover a past in which the current blue selector was on the other side of the trench. And you couldn’t even see a shadow of the Italians.
The previous
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It is 24 October 2015, with Mancini’s Inter visiting Giuseppe Iachini’s Palermo. The final result of 1-1 counts for little at the moment, because the focus must be placed on the Nerazzurri’s starting line-up: Samir Handanovic in goal defended by Yuto Nagatomo, Jeison Murillo, Joao Miranda and Alex Telles; then Fredy Guarin, Geoffrey Kondogbia, Gary Medel and Ivan Perisic up to the attack duo made up of Mauro Icardi and Stevan Jovetic. And the Italians? Andrea Ranocchia plays the final five minutes, Danilo D’Ambrosio and Davide Santon remain seated for the entire time without taking off their bibs. Of course, the squad made available to Mancini by the owners was certainly not crammed with Italians, but the same goes for many teams against which the coach himself is now pointing his finger.
In pink
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That Palermo-Inter was unique in Mancini’s season, while in the history of the Nerazzurri it happened a total of eight times. In general, however, that 2015-2016 season was not particularly happy for the Italian players in the squad. The most employed, Danilo D’Ambrosio, ended the year with 1,917 minutes active, just over half of the recordman Handanovic. For the defender tenth position in the squad with Davide Santon (1.089′) 18th to defend the tricolor flag with difficulty. He was the expected starter against Palermo on the right, but was later replaced by Nagatomo. In that match, however, there weren’t any particular absences beyond Nemanja Vidic who is not Italian. And to think that Ranocchia stopped at 208 total minutes without major injuries until his loan to Sampdoria, while to find the fourth and last Italian employee you have to go down to the nine minutes of 18-year-old Fabio Della Giovanna, today at Pro Sesto in Serie C. Before So, was it better? Not so…
March 21 – 12:27
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