APPIANO
GENTILE – Mateo Kovacic admitted that his Italian "isn’t the greatest, but is getting
better" as he spoke in an exclusive interview with
Marco Barzaghi of Mediaset.
The
Croatian midfielder recalled his arrival at Inter: "All my friends helped
me to get used to everything, Stankovic and Handanovic in particular. But I’d
say all of them helped. The hardest part of all was not speaking Italian,
because I couldn’t understand all the things the coach was saying. However it’s
going much better now."
Kovacic
continued: "I’m doing well now. Did the physical problem I picked up
during pre-season training hit me at a crucial time? It was a stupid injury. We
were working very hard and well with the coach and it struck at a bad
time."
With
Walter Mazzarri, "we work a lot on tactics and it’s a pleasure for me to
work with a coach like him. Does he want me to be more dangerous and decisive
in front of goal? Yes, that’s true. It’s my main problem. Under Stramaccioni I
played farther away from goal, but now the coach wants me more advanced. I need
to get used to it."
On his
preference between the trequartista and regista roles, Kovavic explained:
"I like all the midfield roles. Any place the coach wants to have me play
is fine with me."
Finally,
he spoke about the latest corporate issues that the club is dealing with:
"These things haven’t distracted us because they’re not our problem. These
are issues for Moratti and Thohir to deal with. Our thoughts are on Torino.
Would we like to give Thohir his first victory? Of course, we want to win. Against Cagliari we conceded a stupid goal, and we lost to Roma because of three
counter-attacks."
