Four shots and four goals conceded. The analysis of Simone Inzaghi It’s biased, of course, but it’s not too far from reality. In the daring 4-4 draw achieved last night at San Siro, his Inter he granted to Juventus five shots on target overall, with 2.17 xG for the Bianconeri. Result: Sommer, with some responsibility on the last two occasions, collected the ball at the bottom of the bag four times. It had never happened that an Italian derby ended 4-4, to find at least eight goals in total you have to go back to 1961 (and we’re talking about a 9-1 for Inter), to see the Nerazzurri concede four goals at home from Juventus goes back to a 1959 Italian Cup match with a 4-1 victory for the Bianconeri. It will be said that Thuram and his teammates also scored four goals: true, but the offensive production of the Italian champions is certainly not in question. Inter, after nine days, have scored twenty-one goals: the same record as last championship. It is defensive solidity that continues to be a theme and records many other numbers.
Speaking of the comparison with last season: in this season, Inter have already conceded 13 goals after nine matchdays. In 2023/2024 it took 27 days to reach the same deficit. At this rate, the projection is 55 goals conceded at the end of the championship: to find similar defensive fragility on the part of the Nerazzurri you have to go back to the 2014/2015 Serie A. Inter, for the record, finished in eighth place in the standings. The current context is different, Inzaghi will probably find corrective measures and it is difficult to imagine the Nerazzurri outside – at least – the top four positions in the rankings at the end of the season. The trendHowever, it continues.
Is it a matter of individuals? Like any coach since football has existed, apart from those in crisis and this is not the case, Inzaghi immediately avoided finding culprits: “It’s clear that there have been mistakes, but it would be easy to point to individuals and instead we must take responsibility everyone more.” The same old moral: the defensive phase is a team thing, not a department thing and even less so its members taken individually. However, we return to the starting point: Inter, overall, do not give their opponents many opportunities. Instead they certainly find the goals, often due to obvious individual shortcomings.
Let’s put feelings aside and take some numbers. Stefan De Vrijyesterday in extreme difficulty against Vlahovic, almost all defensive statistics worsen compared to last season: he dropped from an average of 8.56 per game to 5.75; from 3.92 interceptions to 1.25; from 2.24 aerial duels won to 0.5. Benjamin Pavard drops from 8 average ball recoveries per game to 5.17; from 3.55 interceptions to 3, while improving in terms of duels. Yann Bisseck he improves in ball recoveries and defensive duels but drops in interceptions (2.5 to 2.25) and in stopped dribbles from 0.88 to 0.75. Francesco Acerbiabsent yesterday due to injury, has better data but the trend is the same: from 11.52 ball recoveries on average to 10.29; from 0.62 stopped dribbles to 0.57; from 1.34 defensive aerial duels won to 1.29. They seem like small differences, but overall they end up painting the big picture. The only one to offer obvious improvements is Alessandro Bastoniwho however didn’t understand anything about Francisco Conceiçao’s gusts yesterday. Inter didn’t become a sieve overnight: we are still talking about a big team, in Thiago Motta’s words, one of the favorites to win the scudetto. But the clues are starting to look like evidence, and it could be a question of individuals, as well as the stability of the system. Maybe it would be worse.
*The data cited is taken from *Comparisonator,a football data comparison tool from 271 professional leagues around the world that compares players and clubs using over 300 different metrics.