APPIANO GENTILE - Inevitably the Wesley Sneijder situation came up during the course of Andrea Stramaccioni's pre-match press conference ahead of Inter v Pescara. Here's what the coach said he expects to happen: "I expect him to either stay or go, I want it resolved. The cards are on the table, let's see."
Someone then pointed out to the coach that in September he spoke about building a team around Sneijder: how does he plan on resolving it now, by changing personnel or approach? "I've never made a secret of how much I rate Wes, he always played until he got injured. Then things changed, so did Inter, it's not that our project changed but rather the way we play. We're working on a replacement, it's not easy to find someone as good as him, teams that do have someone like that, tend to keep hold of them. We'll give it everything between now and the end of the month."
Stramaccioni conceded that "having ended the summer transfer window with a certain system in mind before then playing another, you often end up with similar players. You can make signings which complete your squad and you need to do this intelligently. Inter won't make any big signings between now and the end of January, nor will there be any key departures. I've already said it, we won't make a big signing now unless we let someone go. With our new system we need a right-sided player and a central midfielder but they need to be different to the players I've already got, otherwise they're no use to me."
A question then on the future of young star, Alfred Duncan: "Duncan has been a bit unlucky because he got injured after the Coppa Italia match against Verona, just when there was a chance for him to stake a claim for a first team place. Alfred is a key player for us but he's not yet important enough to be considered one of our main men. He's only 19. I think it's important for him to play football. I'd like him to go to a top club in Serie B rather than another team in Serie A, but we'll see."
Stramaccioni finally had a word on Riccardo Saponara: "It makes no sense to talk about a player who's signed for another club. We're tracking a number of young players, we sign some of them, while others go elsewhere."
