APPIANO GENTILE – A united group of players and a united club. That, at least, is one positive Andrea Stramaccioni can take from what has been a complicated season. "I've made mistakes myself, but I'm fortunate to have a group of players who are also great men. I'm fortunate to have Cordoba alongside me – the club and I got that one spot on. He's a real man with lots of experience and part of the credit for our united dressing room must go to him."
Stramaccioni was then asked for his thoughts on comments made by Javier Zanetti about the coach's future. "I've just finished talking about Cordoba but Javier is another person I'm grateful to because he's always been incredibly supportive. He's the captain of Inter and he respects what the president says without contradicting him. If I am to remain the coach of Inter, as the president wants, I'll have Javier to thank too. He's key for us. He's my engine and I want to make sure he's with us for the start of pre-season training, whether he comes along with his leg in plaster, on crutches or whatever."
Moving on from the captain's injury to Ruben Botta's: "Yeah, he's got injured and so has Longo. Two players we were planning to build the future with now need to go under the knife... That's going to frighten off anyone who wants to join Inter, isn't it?" Stramaccioni joked. "Let's just say that we haven't had much luck recently. Could Botta's injury put his move in doubt? He's a young lad who's had a nasty injury but if we've decided to go for him our assessment won't change now. He'll be an Inter player, we'll wait for him."
Back on the subject of Zanetti, how are Inter going to replace him until he returns? "Inter been strong on the right in recent games. We've tried out various solutions to make up for his absence over the last few days, but you can't replace the captain. Javier is unique."
Finally, an update on Yuto Nagatomo's fitness: "At the moment we've decided to look at how he responds to certain tests on the pitch so that we can then choose what's right for Inter. From a medical point of view, our decisions have always been taken with the player's best interests at heart."
