The Ultimate Inter Line-up Of All Time - Who Made The Squad?

A couple of weeks ago while watching clips of old Inter matches on YouTube I started thinking about who would be in my ultimate starting line up of all time, this wasn't quite as easy as i thought it would be as the more i thought about it the more quality players from Inter's history came to mind and I ended up with a 8-10-6 formation which of course is ridiculous & I may as well have just written a post about all the greats of Inter's history, which would be a very long job so i decided to find out who my fellow Interista would say deserved to be in the ultimate line-up.  To keep things consistent i decided to go with the formation that i feel suits Inter's players the best, so i asked my followers on Facebook & Twitter what their ultimate line-up would be on a 4-3-1-2 formation and i got some great replies, though it soon became clear that certain players were on pretty much all the answers, meaning that again i ended up with more players than i needed so the line-up is made up of the most voted for 11.

Inter back in 2nd with a 2-1 win over Lazio

Happy Easter to all Interista, and to make the weekend more special Inter managed to claim all three points from Lazio even though we were down to 10 men with goals coming from Sneijder's 4th of the season and Eto'os 33rd. The downside is after Julio Cesar's red card it means we are without our first choice keeper for the next game on the bright side its against Cesena. The other piece of bad news is that Stankovic had to go off with an injury. Milan beat Brescia with a late goal to put them back to 8 points ahead though with Palermo beating Napoli we have gone above them to reclaim 2nd place, which if we end up finish there I will be happy considering the bad season we've had.

Parma v Inter match report & reactions

This really is getting beyond a joke now, as Inter wrote off pretty much any chance they had for the Scudetto this season and the 2-0 defeat to Parma puts the Nerazzurri a huge 8 points behind Milan with 5 games to go. As always I'm right behind Inter but unless Milan mess up 3 of the last 5 games, which isn't very likely, Inter's only remaining chance of silverware this season depends on the Coppa Italia semi finals against Roma. Unfortunately I didn't get to see the match but from what I've heard and read I'm glad I didn't see it, but from what I can tell it is down to two factors firstly Leonardo's crap tactics including his insistence of playing Pandev & Chivu and starting Sneijder on the bench while leaving Maicon out of the squad completely?!? The second I can only assume is down to frustrations of the recent bad results coming through in the players performances. Anyway here's the match report and what Leonardo & co had to say....

Inter 2-0 Chievo match report & reactions

That's more like it, even though they weren't at their very best yesterday Inter showed a lot more quality than the have for the last two games with a couple of players really standing out, the first was Zanetti who was playing on the right of the 3 man midfield, his speed, passes & runs were outstanding and watching him last night you would never guess he was 37. The other was Yuto Nagatomo who for me was the man of the match was just everywhere defending, poaching balls and making blistering runs up the left wing and also getting a few shots off on goal, I've said it before but this guy has got a really bright future and he reminds me alot of the legendary Roberto Carlos which is exactly the type of player Inter needs. As rumours have suggested this week I think Moratti has got some big changes in mind for next season as all the way through the match he looked less than impressed! But tonight's result went the right way and that's all that matters for now.

Inter v Shalke match report & reactions

What can i say about last nights Champions league quarter final first leg tie against Shalke?  Well let's start with the positives, firstly Milito is back in the starting line up and scored for us and second is Stankovic's wonder goal from 40 yards out in the first 25 seconds of the match (if you missed it see the video above)  Unfortunately that was as good as it got for Inter as the two goals we got during the first half were cancelled out by two goals for Shalke before half time, after half time things went from bad to worse for the Nerazzurri and in a similar style to the derby defeat at the weekend, Shalke managed to make us look like complete amatuers instead of world champions and for the second game in a row Chivu saw a red card yet again weakening our already shaky backline, which was also suffered the blow of an own goal by Ranocchia.  So after another terrible performance by Inter the game ended 2-5 to Shalke meaning that Inter need at least 4 goals on the return leg meaning the mighty Nerazzurri are effectively out of the running for making it through to the semi's. 

So who's to blame? The official verdict from Inter's camp is that the players are fatigued which i can understand after last years amazing run and the world cup followed by loads of injuries and the ridiculous amount of matches played in 2011 so far, but with the squad Inter has at it's disposal that excuse only goes so far to explain this awful week.  The true reason in my opinion is the management as we know the first half of the season was destroyed by Benitez who couldn't organise a pub team let alone anything else then things looked better when Leonardo took over at Christmas but over the last month or so it is becoming more apparent that his tactics only favour an attacking mentality and he seems to give no thought to the defensive side of the team and considering how strong our defense was last season there is no excuse for this and as much as i hate to say it come the end of the season he has to go to be replaced with a manager that can balance the team properley.