In the summer 2006, just weeks after Italy won the World Cup in Berlin, Calciopoli smiled on Inter Milan.
Already awarded the 2005-06 Scudetto following a months-long match-fixing investigation that saw champions Juventus stripped of two titles and relegated to Serie B—a verdict that came just five days after the Azzurri’s win over France—Inter gave the knife a further twist when they signed Patrick Vieira from the Bianconeri on Aug. 2.
Eight days later they paid nearly €25 million to Juventus for striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and before the end of the transfer period their net spending approached €30 million, not including the loan acquisitions of Hernan Crespo and Mario Balotelli.
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Scandal and the bringers of scandal put out of their way, club president Massimo Moratti and manager Roberto Mancini went all in on a chance for immediate success, and what followed was an era of glory unprecedented since the days of Helenio Herrera.
But for Inter, and Mancini in particular, it was glory with an asterisk.
As former Juventus administrator Luciano Moggi wrote in a 2011 column for Libero, “[Inter] started winning when they took advantage of Calciopoli, taking Juve players and bringing in Jose Mourinho.”
He added: “But now Mourinho is gone and the errors have surfaced again. There would need to be another Calciopoli for Inter to start winning again.”
It was Mourinho, after all, who delivered the European Cup as part of an historic treble to San Siro in 2010. By then Mancini had been gone for two years—his repeated Champions League failures having led to a curious exit in which he offered his resignation, changed his mind a day later, but was nevertheless shown the door by Moratti.
He would go on to add a Premier League title with Manchester City and Turkish Cup with Galatasaray to the silverware he won with the Nerazzurri, but with whom there would always be the sense of unfinished business. For while Mourinho was permitted to bask in the glow of the treble, Mancini was at least partially correct when he opined to the London Evening Standard that the Portuguese conquered Europe “because he inherited a team” built by the former Fiorentina and Lazio boss.
And although he left out the parts concerning Mourinho’s Champions League acumen and the Calciopoli fallout, he might have included a reference to his own abilities, which included the fostering of a winning mentality at the club.
It was under Mancini, after all, that the taunting chants of “Non vincente mai” (You lot never win), which had grown agonizingly loud since Inter’s 2003 collapse, were finally silenced; it was Mancini who took the club to its first Scudetto since 1989 and ended a 23-year drought in the Coppa Italia.
Inter ceased to be a laughingstock while he was in charge, and in his return they once again require the 49-year-old to restore an element of pride to the Curva Nord.
Since a second-place finish in 2011, the 18-time champions have finished no better than fifth in Serie A, and going into next weekend’s derby against AC Milan they sit an embarrassing ninth in the table with only a single goal from open play in their last four matches.
Walter Mazzarri, who became the sixth manager appointed since Mourinho’s departure in 2010, never seemed capable of taking the bit of success he enjoyed at Napoli to the next level with Inter. With every face-palm in the dugout he looked more likely to return the club to a perpetual state of embarrassment rather than the halcyon days introduced by Mancini.
He was sacked late last week, on the heels of a 2-2 draw at home to Hellas Verona, and replaced by Mancini, who had reportedly been contacted about the situation just the day before.
Referring to his hiring as a “wonderful challenge,” Mancini refused to speculate about transfer targets, although the likes of Tottenham Hotspur playmaker Erik Lamela, Chelsea winger Mohamed Salah and Manchester City full-back Aleksandar Kolarov have already been linked with loan moves to the club.
Mancini will have to be creative in his second stint with Inter as funds simply won’t be available for the sort of acquisitions he was used to making previously. He’ll find Italian football to be in a general state of economic contraction, and in Erick Thohir he’ll be working alongside a president with whom he has no pre-existing relationship.
In other words, he’ll not exactly be picking up where he left off in 2008, when he won his fourth Scudetto, and in many ways he could find himself in the most difficult situation he has so far experienced as a manager.
Calciopoli is a thing of the past, and Juventus are once again Italian football’s predominant power. For now, Mancini’s biggest task will be to reintroduce the psychology of winning to the Nerazzurri—to lay the groundwork for the next period of success.
Circumstances haven’t smiled on Inter in quite some time, and in his return to the club, Mancini is starting all over again.
Jerrad Peters is a Winnipeg-based writer. Follow him on Twitter
