European Super Cup

Inter v Atletico Madrid

Tonight 7.45pm ITV4

English media seems to be ignoring this game completely. Nothing about it on the BBC or Guardian. Anyone know the teams?

Inter: 1 Julio Cesar; 13 Maicon, 6 Lucio, 25 Samuel, 26 Chivu; 4 Zanetti, 19 Cambiasso; 5 Stankovic, 10 Sneijder, 9 Eto'o; 22 Milito.

Subs: 12 Castellazzi, 2 Cordoba, 17 Mariga, 23 Materazzi, 27 Pandev, 29 Coutinho, 88 Biabiany.

Atletico Madrid: 13 De Gea; 21 Perea, 25 Godin, 18
Dominguez, 17 Ujfalusi; 8 Raul Garcia, 12 Assuncao; 20 Simao, 7 Forlan,
19 Reyes; 10 Aguero.

Subs: 38 Robles, 3 A.Lopez, 4 Suarez, 6 Camacho, 9 Jurado, 11 Merida, 22 Diego Costa.

Atletico leading 1-0 with 15 mins to go. Reyes scored, remember him?

Come on Atletico, hang on

Six wrote:English media seems to be ignoring this game completely.

Aye, nothing was made of it in todays papers and I only remembered the fixture after looking at this thread.

Currently Inter are losing but Bluenine won't really care anyways, he said these things were just glorified friendlies the other day.

2-0 now, Barça's record is 8 mins away from surviving

=(

Penalty to Inter in the 89th minute, but De Gea makes a really superb save. This kid is a future star.



Atletico win

Normally these games are pretty boring and meaningless but this game was pretty good. Inter started off well and then it became rather even. In the second half Atletico played quite well and were more concentrated on the counter. I doubt Inter or Bluenine will be too fussed because it doesn't mean much but this will be good for Atletico who add another trophy to the cabinet which makes this a great year for Atletico. This will also give Quique some extra credit in case things go bad in the league.

Atletico looked quite good in defence and playing 4 Cb's looked a bit uninspired but they looked solid and it might not be a bad idea against good teams. The central midfield also played well and Assuncao-Garcia did well which surprised but perhaps Quique has finally solved this problem. Reyes looks to continue his good form while it just wasn't Forlan's day.

I'm realizing I wish we changed more during the summer.
Keeping all the players that made us proud last season is nice, but seeing the very same team that got everything right losing somewhat badly is rather depressing and induce fears of bad luck coming.

The Al Jazeera experts panel (a pair of old, retired English footballers) have spent almost the entire post-match analysis talking about Mourinho, both of how amazing he's going to be at Madrid, and how Inter would have won this game if he was still around because "he has that magic" and possibly the Inter players don't believe in Benitez that much and don't enjoy playing for him

Of course they conveniently forgot that Benitez did win the Italian Super Cup.

Only caught the very end.

Didn't this used to be much earlier in the season?

fcb wrote:The Al Jazeera experts panel (a pair of old, retired English footballers) have spent almost the entire post-match analysis talking about Mourinho, both of how amazing he's going to be at Madrid, and how Inter would have won this game if he was still around because "he has that magic" and possibly the Inter players don't believe in Benitez that much and don't enjoy playing for him

Of course they conveniently forgot that Benitez did win the Italian Super Cup.

Yeah 'cos if Mourinho was competing for the SuperCup he'd definitely win it...









Benitez has won 1 out of 2 SC's, Mourinho has won 0 of 1.

Benitez 50%

Mourinho 0%


Therefore Benitez > Mourinho

YES our record is safe, some my say its a mickey mouse cup, but winning every cup you played for in a calendar year is no mean feat

Inter cannot act like this did not matter to them, the mentality Mourinho installed is that every second of every match matters, he would have never taken this loss kindly, lets see how Benitez will react hopefully he got used to losing after that terrible season with Liverpool and he brings this to Inter now, so that everything finally goes back to normal.

Super Laudrup wrote:Normally these games are pretty boring and meaningless but this game was pretty good. Inter started off well and then it became rather even. In the second half Atletico played quite well and were more concentrated on the counter. I doubt Inter or Bluenine will be too fussed because it doesn't mean much but this will be good for Atletico who add another trophy to the cabinet which makes this a great year for Atletico. This will also give Quique some extra credit in case things go bad in the league.

Atletico looked quite good in defence and playing 4 Cb's looked a bit uninspired but they looked solid and it might not be a bad idea against good teams. The central midfield also played well and Assuncao-Garcia did well which surprised but perhaps Quique has finally solved this problem. Reyes looks to continue his good form while it just wasn't Forlan's day.

Yeah, I don't care too much about this trophy.... but I don't like Inter losing with their main team... Benitez made an error by reverting to the 442 tonight.... he should ve kept Zanetti at LB, and played Pandev instead of Chivu. Inter did not look good at all, we were poor last night, and that concerns me.

Where did you get idea that this didn't matter to Inter. Benitez said that it did. He has not had time to make this Inter into his team and did not have a proper chance to work with them. Pre-season was later than usual due to World Cup.

No reason to panic yet,although it was strange how badly Inter's attack played yesterday. They outshot Atletico in first half, but how many saves did de Gea have to make. Regarding penalty, he saved it, but fantastic? I think he did what he had to but the penalty was awful!

Regarding transfers: Benitez says that is down to Marco Branca to sort out. Still makes out it is not down to him. I do think Roy is being a bit precious though. Managers/coaches regularly plunder their former teams. If Benitez is wrong for pursuing Kuyt, how does he justify going after Konchesky?

EMP wrote:Where did you get idea that this didn't matter to Inter. Benitez said that it did. He has not had time to make this Inter into his team and did not have a proper chance to work with them. Pre-season was later than usual due to World Cup.

Surely Inter did care, nobody denies that. It was just about Bluenine, who said he doesn't care that much for supercup format competitions, be them national or european.
For me, I recognize there's not much sporting value in one-shot competitions played so early in the season, but still I did care about winning it - I've a penchant for any competition that requires winning another one to enter it, I think there's a prestige value in it. Besides, it was the first time ever we played the European Supercup, and there was that 6 trophy in a year memé... which maybe for the team it's better that it's gone.

I agree we shouldn't read too much into last night game, with early form, fitness and ease with the new coach issues.
We started last season losing the Italian Supercup to Lazio with Mou aswell, and looks how it ended =)

EMP wrote:No reason to panic yet,although it was strange how badly Inter's attack played yesterday. They outshot Atletico in first half, but how many saves did de Gea have to make. Regarding penalty, he saved it, but fantastic? I think he did what he had to but the penalty was awful!

Still, I think there are some causes for concern.
Last season very efficient attacking flow relied on us stumbling upon a 4231 formation in the middle of the season with Eto'o and Pandev as hard working wingers, and having Sneijder and Milito on an exceptional form.

Eto'o has clearly said he's not willing to do the donkey work forever, and Pandev did already show signs of burnout at the end of last season (that is, you can't expect him to carry on the winger duties consistently for the whole season).
Sneijder and Milito, they will improve but you just can't expect to have them always on fire.

So basically we are discovering that the force we relied upon could aswell reveal as ephemeral, and we have little options besides that.
We only just brought in Coutinho and Biabiany, which have great potential but are still untested babies, and meanwhile we lost Balotelli.
We can try different setups, but doing so we are going to hit the historical limits of our squad (lack of true wingers and midfielders with deep lying playmaking abilities), which we never addressed.

For the defensive setup, it's a bit of the same.
We looked unbeatable because we had Lucio and Samuel on superb form, and we played a low line supported by a stubbornly focused team spirit.

Now, Benitez doesn't seem the kind of coach that can at will morph the players into psyched warriors a là Mourinho, and his footballing vision is more at ease with an higher line, which is not a perfect fit for our CB and central midfield personnel.
Fears of Lucio and Samuel not repeating the highs of last season also applies.

Regarding form, there is also a general issue with WC burnout backslash which can affect most of the squad, certainly this is a shared concern with most of the top teams around Europe, but still.


The last issue is about hunger and focus.
The team has been mentally cranked at 11 for the whole last season by Mou, and ended up winning all.
Keeping them at their best in this respect is obviously going to be an issue this year.
Benitez doesn't look like the toughest around in this respect, but it's not an issue with him, it would be hard for anybody, José included.

Bringing in some fresh high profile name would have helped in this respect also, not only in providing us more tactical options.
At the moment the internal competition for first 11 spots is quite limited, there's a core of 13 or so players who can aim for that, and it's the very same names of last season.
I was hoping for a surprise signing in the last days of the market, but the clock is ticking and there are no signs.

All in all, I think we can still be a respected force this year, and by no means I ever thought we could have walked this season exactly like the last one, our success was based on a combination of multiple factors, more than on a super solid foundation a là Barcelona.

It's just that as the season approaches I'm starting to think that we could have done something more to give a solid foundation to our rise to the top.

EMP wrote:

Regarding transfers: Benitez says that is down to Marco Branca to sort out. Still makes out it is not down to him. I do think Roy is being a bit precious though. Managers/coaches regularly plunder their former teams. If Benitez is wrong for pursuing Kuyt, how does he justify going after Konchesky?

They bid €6m plus Muntari for Mascherano mate. That is about as insulting as an offer can get. Plus Rafa supposedly had an agreement when he left that he wouldn't sign any Liverpool players but who knows if this is true, and why would Rafa even care after the way he was shoved out the door.

Atletico were far superior last night. Their players just wanted it far more and for a non possession based team like Inter this is crucial. They'll be fine when the real stuff starts.

COTR wrote:

EMP wrote:

Regarding transfers: Benitez says that is down to Marco Branca to sort out. Still makes out it is not down to him. I do think Roy is being a bit precious though. Managers/coaches regularly plunder their former teams. If Benitez is wrong for pursuing Kuyt, how does he justify going after Konchesky?

They bid €6m plus Muntari for Mascherano mate. That is about as insulting as an offer can get. Plus Rafa supposedly had an agreement when he left that he wouldn't sign any Liverpool players but who knows if this is true, and why would Rafa even care after the way he was shoved out the door.

Atletico were far superior last night. Their players just wanted it far more and for a non possession based team like Inter this is crucial. They'll be fine when the real stuff starts.

That's what I was talking about. Hodgson claims there is written agreemnt that Benitez signed. Rafa didn't deny it. He now claims that he hasn't breached it because Branca not him deals with transfers.

I think Holdgson is being a tad hypocritical as (1) Liverpool pushed Benitez out and (2) managers trust players from former clubs and want to work with them. Hodgson is same. Would he want Konchesky if he hadn't worked with him at Fulham first and knew what he was capable of? Isn't going after him no different that Rafa wanting Liverpool players? All Liverpool has to do is say no sale!

Pierre Littbarski wrote:

fcb wrote:The Al Jazeera experts panel (a pair of old, retired English footballers) have spent almost the entire post-match analysis talking about Mourinho, both of how amazing he's going to be at Madrid, and how Inter would have won this game if he was still around because "he has that magic" and possibly the Inter players don't believe in Benitez that much and don't enjoy playing for him

Of course they conveniently forgot that Benitez did win the Italian Super Cup.

Yeah 'cos if Mourinho was competing for the SuperCup he'd definitely win it...









Benitez has won 1 out of 2 SC's, Mourinho has won 0 of 1.

Benitez 50%

Mourinho 0%


Therefore Benitez > Mourinho

Benitez has won 1 of 2 CL finals, Mourinho has won 2 of 2

Benitez 50%

Mourinho 100%

Therefore Mourinho > Benitez