Cagliari v Inter: Yech.

By: Martha | December 16th, 2007

Oh, yay. Any neutrals watching that match had either killed themselves (or changed the channel) well before the half; only the really strong or really sad made it to the last half hour, when it turned into a football match rather than a giant, ugly pinball game. It ended 2-0 to Inter, but that makes it sounds much more interesting than it actually was. Really, it’s a great mercy on all of us that it’s over.

During the first half Inter, while perhaps not quite as bad as Roma apparently were today, were completely disinterested in the match, and could hardly bring themselves to go through the motions. Yeah, they were playing with three strikers (Zlatan was suspended, but the other three — Crespo, Cruz and Suazo — were all out there), but if they’re just standing around together, that doesn’t make it attacking football. Making runs or passing to a teammate were clearly well beyond what anyone was willing to do, and last-place Cagliari, while perhaps not better, were by far the more threatening team, putting Inter under pressure repeatedly in the first half hour. There were several good half-chances that weren’t seized, and Daniele Conti nearly scored as Julio Cesar stood rooted to the spot. I’m being hard on Inter, but it really sometimes seemed bad luck more than anything else that kept Cagliari from scoring.

At the other end, Inter stood and looked at one another, periodically passing to the ball to the wrong team. Mostly they were just flat and useless, but Cagliari also defended very well, massing bodies behind the ball, trapping on the sidelines, and covering what few runs were made. They made it very difficult for Inter to break them down and, moving as little as Inter were, they had no chance to get through the 10 men between them and the goal. The only threat came from well outside, when Cristian Chivu, who still is yet to play a useful deadball all season, hit the crossbar from maybe 35 yards out; beyond that Inter had nothing, and Cagliari could quite reasonably have felt cautiously optimistic going into the halftime.

In the second half, though, Inter slowly woke up. They were moving a bit more and giving the ball away a little less, and Cagliari’s chances on the counter diminished considerably. The visitors finally broke through the mass of bodies between them and the goal just before the hour mark, but Cagliari Oldboy David Suazo (who was booed a lot, until he left the pitch and got some love from the home fans) whacked the ball wide of an open goal with his shin, and it started to look like it was going to end as pathetically as the match in Turin had earlier in the day. Just a couple minutes later, though, Suazo dumped the ball off for Cruz who took it wide and slid a sharply angled shot past Vincenzo Marruocco in the Cagliari goal, and Inter finally had some breathing room.

From that point on, despite a couple of attacking flurries from a very game Cagliari side (~~Jim Smith~~ Nedo Sonetti even threw on another striker — but never Pasquale Foggia — in a desperate effect to get at least a point and, maybe, save his own job), Inter were more comfortable in possession, sitting deeper and knocking the ball around rather than, you know, giving it away over and over again. There could have been more goals were it not for a great save by Marruocco on Suazo and, later, a free header by Cruz that beat the keeper but was cleared off the line. Suazo did get his goal against his old team, though, when the keeper could only parry Ivan Codoba’s header, and the Hondouran poked it home. (He didn’t celebrate.)

So Inter are now seven points clear at the top of the table, heading into the last round of the first half (which also happens to be the weekend of the Milan derby).