In a Milan submerged by Seveso and Lambro as if it were a Polesine swamp, Mancini's arrival on the Nerazzurri bench was a burst of rediscovered enthusiasm for us Inter fans. For too long we had been dazed and annihilated, to the point of disgust, in the exhausting wait for the "better is yet to come" promised by Mazzarri so much so that we made it the title of a book which now, after the torpedoing of the technician from San Vincenzo, is a veritable quite a literary oxymoron. Here is Mancio again, the one who gave us three championships after so many years of lean and suffering, ready to challenge Milan in the derby.
Dreaming costs nothing. That Obi suddenly becomes a sort of Modric. That Icardi turns into something similar to Cristiano Ronaldo. Let Vidic go back to what he was five years ago. Or that during the season, Jonathan, now in the infirmary, "robbenizzi" himself becoming truly the divine as he appears in a hilarious parody of Buffa that is all the rage on the web. So many wonders, in the shadow of the Madonnina, just because WM will no longer be on the San Siro bench on Sunday but Mancio, who is more beautiful, more international, more likeable than Mazzarri? Too good to be true.
So even before the waters of the Seveso and Lambro withdrew, the surprise effect began to collide with the reality of a roster lacking in magic and talent. Mancini brings a breath of fresh air, his millionaire salary reminds us of Moratti's Bengodi of the past, but he doesn't have the magic wand either. It was he himself who said it. No coach is successful if he doesn't have good players with good feet. The history of football offers very rare exceptions, so much so that it is inexplicable why a coach should cost so expensive given that none of them has ever transformed a nag into a thoroughbred. On the contrary, there is a rich case history of coaches who fail despite having excellent champions at their disposal. Lippi flopped with Inter who had Vieri, Baggio and even Ronaldo until he broke his knee.
Capello has achieved embarrassing results by coaching the national teams first of England and now of Russia. Ranieri even led Greece to lose to tiny Faroe Islands. Van Gaal in the rich and glorious Manchester United seems like the imbolsified brother of the one who led Holland to the Brazilian World Cup, the strategist who invented the goalkeeper ad hoc for the final penalty shootout. Mancio, fresh from a chiaroscuro experience at Galatasaray, is well aware of the pitfalls of his profession, he who was even kicked out of Inter after winning his third Scudetto in his last match in Parma.
Meeting Marco Tronchetti Provera in those days for an interview on the 2008 European Championships, the owner of Pirelli said to me: "I'm sorry, but he was too shaken and stressed to be able to continue". Mancini had become the past in an instant. Mourinho was about to arrive. There was also a judicial dispute. Now Tronchetti himself greets the return of Mancini as the hope of "a recovery tomorrow". There is the derby and immediately after the trip to Rome: a thrilling debut, tests that can send you to heaven but also immediately to hell. Mancini knows it as he knows, even if he can't say it openly, that today's Inter squad is much scarcer than the one he found ten years ago. And Thohir after opening the purse strings for him, finding himself two coaches to pay – 15 million a year, not a trifle! – he doesn't seem willing to make any other important efforts in the January market.
With the long wave of the treble and its heroes exhausted, replaced by completely modest substitutes, the Nerazzurri bench after Mourinho has turned into a terrible coach-crushing machine in which long-time foxes like Benitez and Mazzarri have also ended up. And in the Italian championship there will no longer be a springboard like Calciopoli was for Inter who found themselves winning first a cardboard championship, then a championship without Juve ending up in Serie B and with Milan penalized by eight points. In the meantime, however, Mancini has already accomplished a small miracle by sweeping away that aura of apathy and resignation that had enveloped the Nerazzurri fans week after week, making the increasingly empty San Siro a concentrate of boos.
So Sunday at 20.45, some at San Siro, some in front of the TV, all of us Inter fans will be with him again, against the Rossoneri devils who are not much better off than us. May the best win or, given the times that are running, the least worst.
