…United they fall

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This article was published 24/01/2020 (2397 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s probably not what Manchester United fans want to hear right now, but their club’s current struggles look a lot like those from which Inter Milan is only now emerging. 

See if this sounds familiar.

One of European football’s legacy enterprises, Inter Milan last won a title early last decade, after which they struggled to get back into the Champions League. A revolving door of high-profile and experimental managers fixed nothing, and players who might have made a difference eschewed the club for rather less dysfunctional options, for teams with championship aspirations.

(We could go even further and reminisce about glory in the 1960s and hardship in the ’80s, never mind historic trebles — there really is a reasonable, wide-ranging comparison here — the recent similarities are enough to suit our purposes.)

Now, Inter was thrown into turmoil again and again through repeated share sales and majority ownerships, whereas United seemed to completely unravel when long-time manager Sir Alex Ferguson retired. Both, however, experienced foundation-altering tremors at around the same time, and, as this week’s 2-0 loss at home to Burnley once again underlined, United are still wading through the debris.

Inter, on the other hand, look to have rebuilt into a credible contender for major honours. United should covet that blueprint. The squad seems at a loss for its own ideas at the moment, and could do worse than emulating a strategy that’s working rather well at a club with a nearly parallel history.

As flawed as Manchester United’s ownership may be — and it is absolutely dreadful — it is a picture of excellence compared to the recent shambles at Inter Milan, that coming and going of investors of varying degrees of credibility who left a stream of broken promises in their wake. The Nerazzurri don’t even own their own stadium. The Red Devils boast the biggest one in the Premier League.

What Inter does have that United doesn’t is a technical staff, and a big one. It’s headed by CEO Beppe Marotta, who joined the club after eight years at Juventus in December 2018. He maps out the general direction of the team while Piero Ausilio, the sporting director, takes a more direct hand in the transfer market. Appointed to the job in his early 40s, Ausilio didn’t exactly set Serie A alight with ingenious recruitment in his first few years. If anything, he was too good at closing transfer deals, and he closed a lot of them.

More recently, however, he has signed the likes of Mauro Icardi, Ivan Perisic, Joao Miranda, Antonio Candreva, Milan Skriniar and Diego Godin. Tottenham Hotspur midfielder Christian Eriksen could well make the move to Lombardy in the next few days as well. And he has spotted and provided opportunities to Marcelo Brozovic, Matias Vecino, Roberto Gagliardini and Lautauro Martinez. Similarly shrewd in the loan market, Ausilio brought midfielders Nicolo Barella and Stefano Sensi to San Siro on a temporary basis.

This is the sort of thing a sporting director, or, in United’s case, a prospective director of football, can do for a club. And United should know. Marotta and Ausilio nabbed Romelu Lukaku from Old Trafford last summer and inked Ashley Young just this week. Alexis Sanchez is also at the club on loan.

Of course, even the best players won’t gel into a squad without a capable manager, which is where Antonio Conte comes in.

The former Chelsea, Juventus and Italy boss began imprinting his identity on Inter the moment he landed at Malpensa. There was only ever going to be one way — his way — and players who refused to adapt were jettisoned elsewhere.

Did we mention? Ausilio is also extremely adept at getting rid of the deadwood. Icardi and Persic, for example, are currently plying their trades at Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich, respectively. And the sporting director admits he confers with the manager regarding transfers (he’s also open and forthright with fans), which is what you’d expect from what has become a fundamentally templated relationship in modern football — but one United has so far resisted.

Yes, United is owned by the Glazer family, and yes, career banker Ed Woodward is making the football decisions. Sort of. He can’t seem to close on Sporting Lisbon midfielder Bruno Fernandes (it’s taken him two transfer windows now), and his multi-window pursuits of Luke Shaw and Ander Herrera were similarly amateurish. But the “rebuild” of which current manager Ole Gunnar Solskjar is so fond of mentioning need not take as long as he seems to be bracing United fans for.

Unfortunately for him, he likely won’t be at the club when it’s back near the top of the table. 

United’s first point of business — and this is down to Woodward to do, which means it’s not at all certain it’ll happen — is to appoint a director of football. Every manager employed within the last year has worked with one. They expect it.

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Michael Zorc Ausilio, incidentally, is out of contract in June. It doesn’t have to be him, but someone who can comfortably make up to 15 transactions each summer, coming and going combined. There are maybe three or four current United players who should still be at the club 18 months from now. That’ll take some wheeling and dealing. But it can happen. There needn’t be loyalty to lazy, underperforming players. 

Then, a new manager. There is no sense in sacking Solskjaer and installing a replacement before a director of football is hired. So let the season play out. It’s already lost, anyway. The year before Inter returned to the Champions League they finished seventh. Three years later they’re competing for the Scudetto. United could do it even quicker. They have the resources, and the contemporary Premier League is very, very weak.

Inter Milan and Manchester United: a pair of big clubs that have somehow mirrored one another for more than 100 years. United fans can only hope the pattern sticks.

jerradpeters@gmail.com

Twitter @JerradPeters