The surprising loss by Juventus over the weekend, gives a different twist to this weekends Derby d’Italia.
With an 8 point lead over Juventus, an Inter loss will not have a big impact on the Serie A standings. Inter will still have a comfortable lead over Milan and Juventus as we head into the Christmas period.
A loss however next week to Rubin Kazan would send Inter out of the Champions League and possibly into the Europa League, or worse out of Europe all together. The Kazan game is much more important to Inter’s season and it will be interesting to see what kind of team Mourinho puts out against Juve. Will he rest Sneijder to make sure he is fit against Rubin?
I know I would. How would you approach the Juventus game?
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Sneijder shld be rested, since he is already unfit. For the rest of the players, I wld have no problem starting with them if they are match fit. If Inter leads by half time, den I will rest my key strikers n midfielders, like Milito n Stankovic. To win Juv will be a big morale boost and good preparation for the Rubin game.
The key thing is to avoid injury by substituting any player who look even slightly unwell on the pitch.
I would definitely rest some players… Like Cambiasso, Zanetti, Snejder, Eto’O, for example. but only Mourinho knows in what from those players are at the moment… This is not only for their rest, but also to stress the importance of the Rubin game TO THE PLAYERS.. Don’t tell me, they already know, of course, they know!!! But the coach’ job is to get them prepared as much as possibly, and mentally too… Nothing will work better than make them sit a game against Juventus! I would even sit Julio Cesar maybe too! Because if they loose to the Russians (I am from Russia, i know Rubin maybe better than anyone here), it will be a shame! And no person can convince me, it would be ok, because Rubin outplayed Barcelona… They would not outplay Barcelona if it would be a must-win last-game-of-the-group kind of the game for Barca…
So come on, Inter! This is the time to show in EUROPE that we are worth something… ANYTHING…
And I really don’t like that we suddenly depend so much on Snejder… I love the guy and how he plays, but Mourinho admitted many times already that Inter is not Inter without the Dutch… Barcelona crashed Inter without Messi AND Ibrahimovic!!! That’s the football TEAM!!!
I am tired to hear about Snejder playing or not… I don’t care if he plays next week against Rubin, I want to see the good quality performance regardless who is on the field and who is not… Get s…t together, Mr. Mourinho!
hi ilyaroc. U prefer to rest as many as possible but I prefer not to. So I guess each to his own choice.
Wat u say is correct, Inter is a big enough team to win Rubin with or w/o Snejder. But we should not denied tat Snejder is a extraordinary player who can provide tat extra spark to the Inter, esp against other strong teams.
Barce midfield is revolved around Xavi n Inesta, so as long as those 2 r playing, Barce cant be a bad team suddenly. Having said tat, Inter had missed a gr8 chance to prove their champ lg title credential by failing to beat the current champ. Inter may live to regret it yet.
The 1st half of ur prophesy came true. Now hopefully, the 2nd half will turn out to be true as well.
{ 1 trackback }