At last a win at home for Inter Milan. Wednesday night’s 1-0 victory over Chievo, 12th in the table, was Inter’s first three points in Serie A of 2016.
They had not won at the San Siro Stadium in the league for almost two months. The table reflects the damage done by that run, and how hard Inter must now work to repair the erosion of their prospects through a joyless January.
Four weekends ago, Roberto Mancini’s team were on top of the table, optimistic that in his first full season since returning to the job he left in 2008, he really could oversee a happy déjà vu, and steer Inter to another scudetto on his watch, as he did in 2006, 2007 and in the season of his first departure.
In some of those campaigns, he could afford some slippage, his Inter comfortably superior to the rest. In the current Serie A, tight and fluid at its summit, each misstep threatens a meltdown for anybody of a jittery disposition.
Nerves have been on edge for almost all the coaches among the leading pack. Inter’s most positive result of the year so far, the 2-0 Coppa Italia victory at league-leaders Napoli, got to Maurizio Sarri, the Napoli coach censured for his insulting remarks to Mancini that night.
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Roma, who led the table in the autumn but have since slumped to fifth, fired Rudi Garcia, and replaced him with Luciano Spalletti.
Last weekend, two of the top four had their coaches sent off during their matches, though Paulo Sousa, of Fiorentina, can count himself a little unlucky.
His edginess as his team drew with Genoa expressed itself not in a fit of rage but in his haste to see play continue. He was red-carded for intercepting a ball on its way out of play, but for making contact with the ball before it actually crossed the touchline.
Mancini, who had responded to Sarri's ugly remarksin the Cup tie with a certain gravitas, lost his temper on Sunday, as Inter crashed to a 3-0 defeat in the derby against AC Milan.
His red card followed repeated interjections towards match officials. He made an abusive gesture at Milan fans he said were directing insults at him and he then responded to a question from a television interviewer in crude terms on air, for which he later apologised.
At a club with all the neurotic history of Inter over the last 25 years, signs of meltdown are regarded with deep concern by interisti, the fans, and when Mancini is at the centre of them, they come with baggage.
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Mancini has had his volatile moments with Inter, notably during the 2007-08 season when he offered his resignation in the early spring, then rescinded, and, as far as players at the time, remember, lost some of his authority in a draining, fraught title-race in which an advantage at the summit was alarmingly eroded.
Inter won that title in the end, just holding off Roma’s valiant stalking of them, but, as Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the side’s totem at the time, recalled: “The atmosphere around the team became terrible, we lost harmony and optimism and the trust in the coach vanished. He had to fight to regain his status.”
Mancini, at 51, and now with Premier League success with Manchester City added to his resume, is a wiser man than he was eight years back, but the tests facing him may now be fiercer.
So tight is the title joust that Inter’s poor run has seen them plummet from first place to fourth in the space of three fixtures.
The good news is that Inter’s modern totem, skipper Mauro Icardi, having been dropped to the bench against Milan, returned with a goal against Chievo, and the defence, whose security had had been Mancini’s touchstone for most of the campaign, kept a clean sheet.
Next up, it is Hellas Verona, bottom of the table, away on Sunday. But the respite in the league calendar will seem brief.
Before the end of the month, Inter must go to Fiorentina and Juventus, both now looking down on them in the table.
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