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Minutes played: 5.
Balls touched: 3.
Conte’s perversion is not, in fact, not to let Eriksen be the headline, but to insert him just minutes from the end. Eriksen’s at Inter has become a different sport, with matches lasting a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 5 minutes. Even in a desperate situation like Shakhtar’s, on the last day of the Champions League. A match in which the prudent and attentive defense of the Ukrainians showed all the limits of Conte’s team: offensive predictability, lack of technical quality and the intelligent way of interpreting certain contexts. In a blocked game like this it is natural, from the couch, to invoke Eriksen, or at least the ballistic technique of his right foot, which even in set pieces can help the team in dirty contexts.
This time Eriksen entered with a vitality to match the occasion: he prepared quickly, with a concentrated look, entered the field and really tried to transform football into a sport in which each ball is decisive, that is not it. your sport. He touched three balls and attempted two shots. The first after a good combination with Sánchez in which Inter did not resemble Inter – three or four meter shot. With the second ball he put the ball in the head of Sánchez, who shot the tragic Lukaku.
Was the third ball the decisive one in your history? What would have resulted in a crazy plot twist? Eriksen picks it up from the edge of the area, harpoons it with the right target, moves it to the left, there are countless bodies in front of him. It is not his strong foot but we are talking about a technical player. Eriksen himself said: “If I hit the right shot with the right, if I hit the left shot with the left, I try to do it as quickly as possible.” He shoots hard, but it’s a central shot that goes over the goalkeeper’s head.
It would have been another case of a refined player who saved Inter in the last minute of a decisive match, like Nainggolan against Empoli two seasons ago.
Perhaps they were the only five minutes in which Eriksen showed what could have been and what was not, and in how many ways it could have helped Inter. As always, Conte was asked why he wasn’t included earlier; the answer was that he considers him an attacker (translated: a player who does not participate in the defensive phase) and could only insert him in the place of an attacker for balance reasons.
If we talk so much about Eriksen it is mainly because his figure is at the crossroads of some sensitive issues in our sports discourse: the supposed conflict between technique and competitive spirit, and the even more imaginary between game and result. Conflicts in which Conte has often taken contradictory positions. On the one hand, he has fought battles over the complexity of contemporary football (“Talks from the bar, it’s not like in our times,” Marocchi reproached); On the other hand, however, he is simplistic and crude when he says, for example, that “for a player who comes to Inter, I take technique for granted.” A phrase used precisely to belittle the talent of Eriksen, a player whose profile is the opposite of what Conte likes. A technician at the forefront in many aspects, but who has inherited from the Italian tradition a vision of football that at times seems compartmentalized.
A vision that clearly separates the forwards who fight for the team (Moisés, Estigarribia, Eder), and phenomena that must turn it around, almost always freaks capable of inventing goals from nowhere – such as Lukaku, Diego Costa, Pogba, Vidal. It is not surprising that in the summer he also tried to buy Gervinho. In the mid-range, only “reliable” players are accepted, such as Gagliardini for example. A statement that went unnoticed came after the victory with Mönchengladbach, one of the few peaceful moments of his life in the war, when he described the characteristics of his midfielders in an incredibly rigid way: “It was difficult to intervene from the bench because we had a lot of quality but little ban with Sensi and Eriksen. Brozovic is important in both phases, when he is also an important player. Gagliardini is reliable from all points of view “
In less than a month, Eriksen will be able to escape from Italy and he should have no difficulty finding a team. However, it will be difficult for Inter to defend the investment made a year ago. His experience, so melancholic, also tells of the contradictions of our football.
