Internazionale Milano - Il Ritorno

Today it was confirmed that Walter Mazzarri will step down as manager for Inter Milan as a consequence of last year’s disappointing performances. Mazzarri only lasted a season at the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza after replacing Andrea Stramaccioni as first team manager in May last year.

Following the success of 2010 with ’il triplete’ the expectations on Inter has grown bigger than they have been able to cope with. José Mourinho left an ageing team on a massive payroll that, without his guidance, constantly kept underperforming. His successors have been nowhere near of reaching the same altitudes with the team and have thus left Inter out of the international spotlight for several years. Last in line was the former Napoli manager Walter Mazzarri, backed by the new Indonesian owner Erick Thohir.

Inter’s season can only be summarized as a fiasco. The team's performances granted them with a miserable 5th place, as of this it was to no one’s surprise that Mazzarri got the boot from an increasingly pressured Thohir. With an unwillingness, or rather incapacity, to change his style of play from his trademark counter-attacking 3-5-2 to something more suited for Inter, as of this Mazzarri failed to deliver pleasing results and missed out on this season's Champions League action, which for a club of Inter’s magnitude is a gigantic failure. In order to restore Internazionale’s European reputation Thohir has promised further investments and to bring in a brand new big name manager.