Inter and Atalanta are the two teams, together with Juventus, most disappointed since the start of the season. Of course, not without some bad luck with regard to some results, and of course, with all the extenuating circumstances of these strange weeks: the difficulty of reaching maximum performance without an actual preseason, the obligation to play every three days. However, the recent decline of both teams deserves some broader reflection.
Both Inter and Atalanta came from two defeats in the Champions League, even if they matured in different ways: Conte’s team, despite a good match plan and the usual offensive production, was penalized by technical inaccuracies and some defensive misunderstandings that it brings with it from the beginning of the year. Atalanta, as in previous games, has instead shown to struggle to find the intensity of the last few seasons, even suggesting the possibility of trying to change something in the starting system. A situation described by Gasperini himself.
Both Inter and Atalanta seemed to be holding back for most of the match: perhaps cup burns contributed. The teams then were lined up in a mirror image, thus giving a general feeling of stalemate. And in this context there has been so much imprecision and insecurity. The offensive combinations, distinctive to both tactical identities, seemed less effective. Nor should the weight of absences be underestimated, or the delay in condition of several key players.
In this sense, the most distorted formation was that of Atalanta, who appeared with the rookie Matteo Ruggeri, left-back 2002, on the orphaned band of Gosens and with Mojica temporarily postponed. The presence of Pasalic in the middle, in itself, is anything but a novelty, but the absences of De Roon and Ilicic are also evident, when the substitutes do not play a match up to par. On the other hand, the main novelty concerned the attack, where Sanchez took Lukaku’s place alongside Lautaro.
A balanced match in offensive production.
Atalanta must rediscover unpredictability
One of the most evident problems of Inter’s last period was the difficulty in defending the space behind the midfielders; a criticality that can be the result of both the change in the staggering in the middle (with a double median and one close to the tips), and some individual misunderstanding in the times and ways in which it is necessary to shorten. The freshest example is the goal conceded by Rodrygo against Real Madrid. In this respect, Inter were much more convincing than usual. Conte has chosen to use Brozovic, Vidal and Barella, with the latter in the hybrid position between midfielder and attacking midfielder on the center right. He therefore remained close enough to his team mates, taking away space for Atalanta’s central combinations.
However, it must be said that Gasperini’s team seemed a bit renounced in the search for verticalizations across the lines, bottling up too often on the exteriors Hateboer and Ruggeri, hardly ever served in space. Darmian and Young, on the other hand, played a fairly precise game defensively and thanks to the help of the doubling of the midfielders they made these external climbs predictable. Pasalic, used alongside Freuler in place of De Roon, did not play a good game in terms of distribution, both for the lack of reactivity in the light central passing lines, and for a few too many mistakes even on the side changes.
As a rule this season, once again the best offensive solution for Atalanta was to rely on the initiatives of Gomez who, even against a particularly orderly positional defense, managed on a couple of occasions to carry the ball generating superiority or to accelerate. the phrasing.
Gomez receives between the lines from Toloi and draws all the attention to himself, later finding Malinovsky on the weak side.
Inter’s caution has limited the fluidity of Atalanta, who are always too timid in individual initiatives. There have been situations in which Gasperini’s team produced chances by moving the ball quickly. For the rest, Atalanta played a good game from a defensive point of view, both for the good performance of the central players (especially and finally Romero), intense and quick in shortening on the tips, and in terms of re-aggression.
Here, for example, Atalanta was good at reacting to a lost ball by slowing down Inter’s restart, then collapsing around the bearer and regaining possession.
To change pace and find a balance, Gasperini put his hand to the structure, a significant fact. Maybe not in strictly numerical terms, given that, as has happened on other occasions, when they changed their system at a disadvantage, Atalanta was paradoxically even more fluid and illegible in the occupation of the spaces. However, from the moment he renounced a defender (Toloi) in favor of a striker (Muriel), Gasperini found a level of danger never experienced in the previous hour of play.
Atalanta closed the game with a 4-man defense, with Hateboer and Ruggeri who, however, climbed asymmetrically, keeping the trio behind in the advanced attack phase. Gomez played the entire last part of the race practically from the top, with Freuler and Pessina (replacing Pasalic) taking over in his support, while Miranchuk, on his debut in the championship, acted in a hybrid position on the center-right . Muriel and Lammers, in attack, were in constant movement and this undermined some convictions of Inter’s defensive line, which seemed too passive on the occasion of the goal.
In the final chaos it was clear that Gomez had to give support to the front row and that the two full backs would have to move up in turns.
It must be said that Miranchuk did what Malinovskij had not been able to throughout his game: capitalize on the opportunity and, in general, engage the line more (and thus went one step away from the brace). Inter have suffered this change of pace and this positive chaos in the rotations of the opponents, but this time for Conte the biggest recriminations may be for the management of the attacking phase.
The short blanket of Inter
In short, Inter in these very first months of 2020/21 seems unable to close a game by convincing. The good offensive production has never managed to compensate for the many defensive imbalances. Against Atalanta, however, we saw an Inter with the opposite problem. Aside from the pain in the final part of the game, defensive compactness was not as much of a problem as offensive effectiveness was.
Inter was unable to manipulate Atalanta’s strong pressure, which, while bringing numerical parity forward, never made itself discovered.
The absence of Lukaku against a dominant team on the advances like Atalanta, took away from Inter the naturalness in the central ascent, the nectar of Conte’s game. Lautaro and Sanchez divided the match and in depth defaults according to the situation, but were kept away from the area, and the lowering of Barella to help out against Atalanta’s high pressure in numerical parity, despite sometimes leading with Toloi, it was not useful for quickly finding spaces to attack.
Most of the long verticalizations, on the figure or in depth, were quietly controlled by the Atalanta defenders.
It should be added the perhaps too submissive attitude of the fifths, Darmian and Young who, apart from the chance of the goal, did not worry their opponents, despite one not being in the best of form and the other was an absolute rookie. Apart from the goal, Inter’s other two best chances have a common denominator, which perhaps everyone would have expected to see more often since Conte found Vidal: his insertions in space.
In the first case, Bastoni crosses, whose cover comes from Brozovic, so Vidal can devote himself to attacking space. In the second, Barella verticalizes and it is not clear whether he was looking for Sanchez or Lautaro, but the ball reaches the first, who triangulates with the Argentine while Vidal attacks the depth.
Especially in a game where an important reference such as Lukaku was missing, creating opportunities for Vidal’s insertions had to be an asset. For various reasons, however, the Chilean is very involved – with mixed results – in the development of possession. So far at Inter he has been more attentive to the ball than to space.
Here, for example, Vidal lowers and widens as Young attacks the depth, and Bastoni will try to find him with an unsuccessful verticalization.
A match in which offensive actions work less can happen, even more so if in the absence of one’s offensive pivot in front and the most creative winger, and against a grim team in duels. Even in light of Atalanta’s final reaction, Inter can be happy with the final draw, which came thanks to a good containment job.
In a future key it is reasonable to expect, from both teams, a return to the fierce balance that has characterized them: faster and more dynamic attack phases and the right defensive reactivity. The draw does not satisfy either of the two teams, but it will be up to them to turn it into a restart point. They will have to take advantage of the positive aspects: for Inter the greater compactness; for Atalanta the creativity found in the chaos and in the final emergency, in which he took the opponent to the extreme through the total control of the pace of play.
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