Against Milan, his football intelligence was fundamental for Inter.
When Henrikh Mkhitaryan arrived in Italy, the excitement around his rare way of playing football – a vertical and discontinuous interpretation, full of tricks that made him resemble a South American attacking midfielder – had already dissipated. Partly because of the prejudice we have towards older footballers: human beings who we are amazed are still able to express their talent, as if we had stuck an indisputable expiry date on the back of their necks. A little because in fact it had been years since we had been able to enjoy his accelerations, his ferocious taste for dribbling and the last pass, his escapes in the heart of the penalty area. Mkhitaryan he arrived in Rome at the age of 31, dumped in a few months by both Manchester United and Arsenal. Why should we believe him? The historical perspective of his career began to contain specters. What role really belonged to him? Was he a midfielder or a striker? A creative player, of course, but one that has aged badly, creased like a dress that we would have worn five or six years ago and that no longer fits today.
Instead, in Serie A, Mkhitaryan’s talent has flourished again. It would be enough to present the account of the last Milan derby, extract from the drawer of short-term memory the snapshots of Mkhitaryan’s domination of Milan’s midfield, his elusive handling of the ball at his feet, the intellectual spirit with which he touches every ball.
Let’s start from the end, that is, from the ball that Frattesi deflects into the goal in the 5-1 goal. Mkhitaryan wins the tackle with Musah – the latest substitute for Milan, in the 86th minute – a few meters beyond the midfield line and begins to lead the ball holding it tightly around his instep. At that point, however, Arnautovic and Lautaro both attack the depth with a rather clumsy external cut. How many attacking midfielders would have supported a subdued pass, surrendered to the anthropological and ravenous superiority of the attackers? Many, but among them there is no Henrikh Mkhitaryan. The Armenian, who started from a decentralized area on the left, begins to cut his run towards the foul line of the penalty area. In the final meters of Milan there are so many Inter players that it sends Thiaw into panic, who follows Lautaro’s cut towards the outside in vain, leaving a central corridor unprotected.
It’s an assist that may appear easy, but it isn’t. First of all for the intensity with which Mkhitaryan rages between Milan’s lines at the end of the match, after having destroyed the recovery attempt of a midfielder ten years younger. And equally it should not be overlooked knowledge of Mkhitaryan’s time, his philosophical expectation of a free space through which to pass the ball. His entire playing style is based on concepts like this: Mkhitaryan is a literary player surrounded by an aura of normality.
In Simone Inzaghi’s Inter his influence has grown slowly, and today more than ever it is difficult to see him outside the starting eleven. In the summer his name had circulated mostly in relation to the arrival of Frattesi, a 24 year old box to box who should have taken away his starting place. However, with his technical qualities, before his athletic and mental ones, Mkhitaryan sharpens the control that Inter gives to matches. He always knows where to position himself to receive in the intermediate corridors, and above all how to get around the opponent’s pressure despite not being a master of oriented controls. According to statistics from FbrefMkhitaryan is among the 20% of midfielders who make the most progressive passes across the league – 2.07 per ninety minutes – but is also among those who create the most shooting actions – 3.20 per game.
Against Milan, his ability to fill the area by intelligently breaking free was key to Inter’s ferocious transitions. In the 1-0 goal, for example, he deflected a strike from Dimarco halfway between a shot and a cross: a touch that was both astute and graceful. He finished the derby with 34 successful passes out of 38 (89%), two key passes and six successful tackles. A total midfielder’s game, contributing in all phases of the game. It was not a given that Mkhitaryan’s talent would become so liquid, that is, capable of applying to very different contexts. This is the case of the recovery of the ball, already mentioned before, from Musah in the action of the fifth goal.
At the beginning of his career he was also deployed as a second striker, and therefore in recent years he has moved back his position, but Mkhitaryan has always been a player anarchist. At 13 he did an internship in Brazil, with San Paolo, because he wanted to become like Kakà. It is a recognizable experience in his way of thinking with the ball at his feet, in that voluptuous freedom that for some coaches made him a genius, for others discontinuous.
Himself he defined himself half Brazilian in an interview with The Players’ Tribuneciting the importance of that brief fragment of his adolescence. “When I returned home I was still thin and frail, but in Brazil I had learned the technique” he said. “On the pitch I felt more free”.
The 3-1 goal is closer to being included in the Champions League semi-final derby a few months ago. Even in that case it was Mkhitaryan who closed the discussions on Inter’s qualification. In the first half he even came close to scoring a double with a header after a cut at the near post. They are extracts from the Mkhitaryan’s intellectual supremacy over Milan’s midfield, of an ability to read the game that at this level, in Serie A, no one can boast. Mkhitaryan knows where to be found to hit the ball in any way, as long as he produces a useful play for the team. “It doesn’t matter whether I’m a starter or not” he said with a leader’s air after the match. “The goal is the second star”.
A player with his characteristics rarely fails in Serie A. In a game so radical in its tactical rigor, even a small drop of creativity can make the difference. Sometimes we complain about the average age of the champions who arrive in Italy, we tell ourselves that our championship no longer produces top-tier youngsters and that we have to settle for old guys on their way out. Mkhitaryan’s evolution as the most influential midfielder in the game of the best Italian team of the moment, at 35 years old and after a career spent higher up on the pitch, he is instead the demonstration of the exact opposite. That sometimes time doesn’t flow to necessarily make things worse, that is.
Like the story of the protagonist of Memento, Mkhitaryan’s career also seemed to unravel as if it were upside down, from the end to the beginning. We have known him already mature, a finished footballer, without much room for improvement, and today we are appreciating it precisely because it is able to offer us a new version of itself in every big game. It will be difficult for the Inter fans to heal the open wound of the Champions League final, in which Mkhitaryan did not play from the start: yet this derby won 5-1 is already the first wave of a new happiness. And it is precisely the joy with which San Siro celebrated him that made Henrikh Mkhitaryan’s human parable even more special.
2023-09-18 14:00:00
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