APPIANO GENTILE – Andrea Stramaccioni gave his views on a variety of topics during his press conference before Inter v Rubin Kazan, including his new centre-back pairing of Andrea Ranocchia and Juan Jesus. In light of all their recent plaudits, the coach was asked how he thought they fared against Torino, in particular 'surprise package' Juan Jesus. "I expected them to do a bit worse actually..." the coach joked. "But no, seriously, Juan Jesus deserves all the praise and so too does Ranocchia – he's a player Inter and I can count on. Juan performed superbly but let's not place expectations on him that are hard to live up to at this club. Juan and Andrea offer Inter a truly bright future, in a position where it's hard to find top players."
Reflecting on the Torino game more in general, the coach observed that "It was the only game where we played a bit differently, in all the other matches Inter played in a similar way. But we were missing a few players in Turin and some of them didn't have 90 minutes in their legs. If Palacio had been fit he would have been able to slot into the role that Alvarez had. The important thing for me is that the players can adapt to different situations during the match, to different positions, but not a different playing philosophy. We tried to be in control the whole time against Torino. I would have been worried if we'd seen long balls pumped forward for Milito to nod on..."
Stramaccioni then addressed the Nerazzurri fans: "As far as I can tell, I mean, for as long as i've been here, the Inter supporters have always been close to us, even when we were in a difficult situation like at the end of last season. In August they flocked to the stadium in numbers and now we have the most season ticket holders in Italy. 'Thank you' is all we can say to the fans."
The coach was asked whether Dejan Stankovic still features in Inter's plans: "He's having an operation because he's part of Inter's plans. We'll wait for him because he's very important to us, both Stankovic the man and Stankovic the footballer."
