Euroscene: "For Christ's sake, when are you going to wake up and get into the game?" The scene is the Inter Milan dressingroom in the Madrigal stadium at half-time in last week's Villarreal versus Inter Champions League quarter-final tie. Even though the score at the time was 0-0, good enough to see Inter progress to the semi-finals, the atmosphere in the Inter dressingroom was far from sweetness and light.
The player being called on to "put himself about" was Inter's Brazilian striker Adriano and the man pointing the accusatory finger was Argentine Juan Sebastien Veron. Throughout a poor first half performance from Inter, both Veron and Portuguese ace Figo had repeatedly exchanged words with Adriano, calling for more effort from the Brazilian. When the team got back to the dressingroom, Veron's angry outburst against Adriano prompted an equally angry response. Within seconds, both players were at one another's throats and had it not been for the intervention of coach Roberto Mancini, a good old bout of fisticuffs was on the cards.
The rest, of course, is history. Indeed, if you are an Inter fan, then it is a sadly familiar history. For the umpteenth time in the last decade, Inter totally failed to deliver on the Big Day: "We didn't do our duty against Villarreal, none of us did," said coach Mancini whose sense of frustrated rage after the match was such that he sat in the dressingroom corner, without saying a word to his players, and quietly wept.
Reflecting on the game, Mancini added: "You can always lose a game, there's lots of ways in which you can get beaten, but to get beaten the way we did, to go down without playing at all, no, that's not acceptable. If I had been an Inter fan, I would have reacted badly too."
Unfortunately for Mancini and the club, some Inter "fans" took him at his word literally. Not only did a small group of "ultras" turn up at Milan's Malpensa airport to shout abuse at the team on their return from Spain last week but they also repeated the performance early on Sunday morning when the side returned from a 2-1 Serie A win over Ascoli, even physically attacking two players, Argentine captain Javier Zanetti and midfielder Cristiano Zanetti.
The attack prompted Mancini to say yesterday he would leave Italian soccer when his time at the Serie A club ends. "This matter has speeded up my plans to go abroad - when I finish with Inter I will leave Italy, that's a certainty," he said.
"Playing and enjoying yourself, which is what the game is all about, is no longer possible. You can't win or lose and think only about what happens on the field, unfortunately if you lose you have to think about other things as well," he added.
Of more potential significance for the club is the fact that club owner, petrol millionaire Massimo Moratti, is now questioning his own, not inconsiderable commitment. Over the last decade, he has poured more than €600 million into the club through the purchase and payment of a veritable galaxy of international stars. In return, he has won one Uefa Cup and one Italian Cup.
It must have been galling to see his all-star 11 crumble in the face of a determined, battling Villarreal side filled with the rejects of Europe's most famous club sides (to name but the obvious, Uruguayan Diego Forlan is ex-Manchester United, Argentine Juan Ronan Riquelme is ex-Barcelona, Italian Alessio Tacchinardi is ex-Juventus and Argentine Juan Pablo Sorin is ex-Lazio, ex-Barcelona and ex-Paris St Germain).
One wonders, too, with just what enthusiasm Moratti will watch his side in tonight's Italian Cup semi-final, second leg tie against Udinese. Inter are 1-0 up from the first leg but, frankly, a second consecutive Italian Cup triumph for his team would be almost offensive in the wake of that dismal showing against Villarreal.
Since buying out the majority shareholding in the club in 1995, Moratti has gone through a Who's Who of talented coaches. Ottavio Bianchi, Roy Hodgson, Gigi Simoni, Mircea Lucescu, Marcello Lippi, Marco Tardelli, Hector Cuper and Alberto Zaccheroni (in that order) had all tried, and failed, before Mancini took over in the summer of 2004.
Whatever the future holds for Inter, and increased investment in their youth team structure might help, last week's tie with Villarreal served as a timely reminder of an old football cliché, Chelsea and Abramovich notwithstanding. In football, you cannot always buy success.
