APPIANO GENTILE – Rodrigo Palacio's injury was naturally one of the topics brought up in Andrea Stramaccioni's press conference on the eve of Inter v Atalanta. The coach explained: "The diagnosis made by our medical staff was clear. It's a Grade 2 hamstring injury, which as we all know means a long spell on the sidelines. I've read some untruths about his injury, because he's going to be out for a long time. It's not my job to determine exactly how long for, but it's going to be quite a while. And considering that tomorrow is the 7th and the league season ends in a month and ten days' time, it's a huge blow for us. You can't go around saying that he'll be back for the Roma match. That's just deceiving people. He's got a serious injury, he'll never make it in time for Roma."
Palacio's injury also poses the problem of what solutions can be used to make up for his absence. The coach made the following assessment: "One of the solutions would be for Inter to play with a centre forward. Antonio could operate as a frontman playing with his back to goal and feed his team-mates making forward runs. Tommaso is an in-the-box player, so Inter could play with a single striker or with two up front. At the moment, as we have to go straight into the next game, we'll maintain our basic shape. We've lost an attacking outlet but we've been doing well with this shape. We might not start with both Antonio and Tommaso, but in that case it would be because doing so means you have fewer options to change things midway through. With Rocchi and Cassano in the starting line-up I'd only have a youth player on the bench. We'd have fewer arrows to fire up front. Mind you, I've always got Ranocchia...
"In any case, ever since he arrived Rocchi has trained hard to get back to full fitness. He's as experienced as they come and I'm sure he'll be ready. We've all got to take more responsibility now, from Rocchi to Alvarez, Guarin and Schelotto. We all have to give a bit more. Alvarez has been unlucky in that he's not been able to get a consistent run going but when he's had that he's done well."
Stramaccioni was also quizzed on the fitness of Yuto Nagatomo and whether the wing-back might need to go under the knife. "Not to my knowledge," he answered.
Then to a question on whether Mateo Kovacic should play in a more advanced role, Stramaccioni replied with a smile: "That's precisely why we're looking for another Kovacic, so that we can have one up near the opposition goal and another one further back. He's talented, a catalyst. Kovacic is the sort of player we were lacking in midfield. And since we've got one of the league's best advanced playmakers in Cassano, we can expect quality along the Kovacic-Cassano axis."
The coach was asked for his view on the possibility of creating a reserve league in Italy. "I've always maintained that Italian football is penalised by the lack of a middle team. I'm completely in favour of it. It's crucial to have something between youth football and Serie A. It would offer more mature youth players the chance to play regularly. Bessa, for example, is a player who's not playing an awful lot at the moment and when he comes back [from Vicenza], he'll be someone I want to invest in but he hasn't played much. With a reserve team I'd have been able to give him more playing time. I think the ideal situation would be to have youngsters playing against real teams - an Inter B against Lega Pro [third tier] sides for example. The Primavera lads can't even imagine the magnitude of a real game. I think Italian football would benefit."
