Article 37 — Inter 11–14
Leonardo resigned at the end of the 2010–11 season to return to a directorial position, this time as the Director of Football at Paris-Saint Germain. Gian Piero Gasperini was appointed as Inter’s new manager.
Diego Forlan was the biggest name we signed for 2011–12 after a successful time in Spain at Villareal and Atletico Madrid and for his national team, Uruguay at the 2010 World Cup. Other players signed permanently were Luc Castaignos, Ricky Alvarez and Jonathan. Andrea Poli and Mauro Zarate were signed on loan. Yuto Nagatomo was signed permanently in exchange with youth products, Luca Caldirola and Luca Garritano. In the winter, Fredy Guarin and Angelo Palombo were signed on loan while Juan Jesus was signed permanently.
The signings and the sales this season would reflect the change in fortune at Inter as the club found the need to balance the books to meet the UEFA Financial Fair Play regulations. As a result, we had to lose some star players before time. Samuel Eto’o was the first Treble hero to leave for a big transfer fee. Davide Santon was another from the Treble team that was sold in the summer. Houssine Kharja’s loan spell ended and he was allowed to return, Marco Materazzi retired, Victor Obinna, Nelson Rivas, David Suazo were released from their contracts and McDonald Mariga and one other Treble hero, Goran Pandev were allowed to leave on loan. Jonathan, Treble winner Sulley Muntari and Philippe Countinho were allowed to leave on loan in the winter and there was another casualty among the Treble heroes, Thiago Motta.
Inter lost the Supercoppa Italiana to neighbours AC Milan 1–2 in another edition of the Supercoppa to be played overseas in Beijing, China. After a poor start to the season where we only won 1 game in the first 6 across all competitions, Gasperini was sacked. The final blow came when Inter lost 1–3 away to newly promoted, Novara. Claudio Ranieri was hired to replace him but there wasn’t much change in Inter’s fortune. His best result was a 1–0 win over defending champions AC Milan, our first win in 3 consecutive matches against our neighbours. Ranieri was sacked after a 2–0 defeat away to fierce rivals, Juventus.
Andrea Stramaccioni was promoted to be the first team manager after guiding the Inter Primavera team to glory in the 2011–12 NextGen Series. He had a great run to the end of the season, being unbeaten for 7 matches in 9 including a second derby win over AC Milan. Inter finished the season in 6th place and qualified for the Europa League. It was our lowest league finish since 1998–99. Our defence of the Coppa Italia was ended in the quarter-final, losing 2–0 to Napoli.
In the Champions League, we made it out of the group stage top of the group after losing the first match with Gasperini in charge. Our participation in Europe’s elite club competition ended in the 2nd Round losing on away goals to French club, Olympique Marseille. This would mark our last participation in the Champions League for some time.
This season would mark the start of a dark era also known as the banter era for Inter.
Andrea Stramaccioni was kept on in his position as manager of Inter for 2012–13 after a promising end to the 2011–12 season and a good start to life as Inter manager.
Fredy Guarin impressed enough in his loan spell to be signed permanently, Rodrigo Palacio, one of the best signings made in this era and Alvaro Pereira were also signed permanently. On loan, we signed Matias Silvestre, Gaby Mundigayi and Walter Gargano. Antonio Cassano was signed in exchange with Gianpaolo Pazzini and Samir Handanovic was signed in a co-ownership deal in exchange with youth product Marco Davide Faraoni. Handanovic would also turn out to be a great signing serving the club very well, saving us in many matches in future seasons until he eventually became captain later in this era. In the winter, we signed Tommaso Rocchi, Mateo Kovacic, who I really enjoyed watching, Zdravko Kuzmanovic, Ezequiel Schelotto and Juan Pablo Carrizo.
The exodus of the Treble winners continued, Ivan Cordoba and Paolo Orlandoni retired, Lucio had his contract terminated by mutual consent, Sulley Muntari and Julio Cesar’s contract ended, Maicon was sold and Goran Pandev made his loan move permanent. The club decided against signing Mauro Zarate, Angelo Palombo and Andrea Poli permanently. I thought Poli played well enough to deserve a permanent move so I was disappointed when it didn’t happen. Diego Forlan’s contract was terminated early by mutual consent as he looked like a declining force and Luc Castaignos was also sold after one season at the club. In the winter, Wesley Sneijder was sold after a long, disappointing haggle over his contract, Philippe Coutinho went on to show his true value and potential after he joined Liverpool, like Andrea Pirlo and Clarence Seedorf before him, a player who’s real talent was wasted at Inter.
Stramaccioni had a good first half of the season which peaked after becoming the first team to beat Juventus at the new Juventus Stadium. We won that match 3–1. That win concluded a run of 7 consecutive wins that brought us up to 2nd place in the table. The season came crashing down after that as we went on a shocking run and steep decline of form without ever recovering. We won only 7 matches out of the remaining 25 matches in Serie A. The 1–1 draw in the second Milan derby felt like a win. We ended the season in 9th place and didn’t qualify for Europe for the first time since 1999–00.
We reached the semi-final of the Coppa Italia where we faced a familiar foe in this competition, AS Roma. Roma knocked us out with a 5–3 aggregate win. In the Europa League, Inter navigated past 2 qualifying rounds against Croatian team, Hajduk Split and Romanian outfit Vaslui to qualify for the group stage where we finished 2nd in the group to Russian team, Rubin Kazan. We had faced the Russians in our Champions League group stage in 2009–10. Our participation in Europe ended in the Round of 16. After being outplayed and beaten 3–0 by Tottenham Hotspur at White Hart Lane in the first leg, we won 3–0 over 90 minutes at San Siro to force extra-time. Tottenham scored a crucial away goal and even though we scored once more to win 4–1 on the night, we were knocked out on away goals rule.
The theme of strong starts and free-falling form in the second half of the season would become common for Inter in this time. It has become an enigma and a mystery to me as to why we keep suffering these blackouts at the same time almost every season.
Andrea Stramaccioni was sacked at the end of the 2012–13 season and he was replaced by Walter Mazzarri who had done very well to guide Napoli to consecutive Champions League qualifications and to Coppa Italia triumph in 2011–12.
Inter signed Hernanes, one of the most effective and later controversial players we had in this era, Mauro Icardi, Saphir Taider, Diego Laxalt and Ishak Belfodil. Matias Silvestre and Gaby Mundigayi’s loan moves were made permanent. Rolando and Wallace were signed on loan, Marco Andreolli, a former Inter youth product was re-signed and Hugo Campagnaro was signed on a free transfer. In the winter market, Danilo D’Ambrosio, who would turn out to be one of the most reliable signings made in this era, was signed.
It was Dejan Stankovic’s time to say goodbye to the club as he ended his contract by mutual consent to retire. Silvestre, Schelotto, Cassano and Laxalt left on loan. Gargano and Rocchi left at the end of their loan spell. A trio of Inter youth products that did well for the Italy U-21 team at the U-21 European Championships, Giulio Donati, Luca Caldirola and Matteo Bianchetti were all sold. In the winter market, Belfodil left on loan.
This season would also the mark the last of the Massimo Moratti era. Indonesian businessman, Erick Thohir bought a majority stake in the club through International Sports Capital HK Limited to be the new club President in November 2013. Moratti remained as honorary President. This would herald the modernisation of Inter as Moratti could no longer cope with the club to be in line with UEFA’s Financial Fair Play regulations as it found itself in the red.
Mazzarri had better results than his predecessor Stramaccioni, the highlight of which came in the first half of the season, a 7–0 thrashing of Sassuolo away and a 1–0 win over Milan in the first derby of the season. There was an overall improvement in the league finish in a season without European football as Inter finished in 5th place, 5 points off 4th place and the final Champions League spot. The positive was that Inter were back in Europe next season, qualifying for the Europa League. Inter was still a long way off their best and what was expected of a club as big as Inter. In the Coppa Italia, we reached the Round of 16, losing 1–0 to Udinese.
The match against Sampdoria on the 13th April 2014 at the Stadio Luigi Ferraris became known as the Icardi vs Maxi Lopez match. Leading to the game, the story of Maxi Lopez’s wife, Wanda Nara’s affair with Icardi emerged. Icardi and Lopez were best friends when Icardi got to know of Wanda. The story pre-game was on whether Icardi and Maxi would shake hands or not. The answer was no. Icardi was a former Sampdoria player but the fans were now against his him, backing their new striker, Maxi Lopez. Inter played well and Icardi thrived on the negativity from the partisan crowd to produce a great performance to help to a resounding 4–0 win. Handanovic played his part too to keep a clean-sheet.
I can’t care less what players do in their private life and there have been a fair number of controversial off-field shenanigans from footballers. Stealing the wife of your best friend is betrayal but again, I will not mind whatever Icardi did if he had conducted himself well in the aftermath of the sensational revelation of this affair. I lost all respect for him after this episode.
Significantly, this season marked the end of the road for long-serving club captain, Javier Zanetti, Esteban Cambiasso, Diego Milito, Walter Samuel and Christian Chivu, the final survivors of the glorious Treble of 2010. Zanetti retired and would serve as the Vice-President at the club the following season. His jersey number 4 was retired by the club in his honour. Cambiasso left on a free transfer to continue his football in England and Greece before retiring in 2017, Samuel played for one more season in Switzerland, Milito returned to Argentina to play for 2 more years and like Zanetti, Chivu retired.
The curtains on our dominant, successful era have come down. These were stormy and gloomy days now. It would continue as it is until some glimmer of light would appear later in this decade.
