Internazionale – River Plate: Chivu Calls For More Angles In The Framework (2-0)

Before his first game as Internazionale coach, Cristian Chivu talked about maintaining the principles, whilst improving and adding to them. Three games in and we can notice these tweaks, but will this better the Italian giants in time?

Tactical analysis and match report by Joel Parker.

Level on four points, Inter and River Plate went into the final group stage game with every possibility still left on the table.

Though Inter grabbed their first win of the tournament against Urawa Red Diamonds, the circumstances in which this arrived were not pleasant for the newly-appointed Cristian Chivu. The deep rotations of Inzaghi had been replaced by a front five which was flexible in their positions: the result was plenty of possession, little creativity and being 1-0 down with a quarter of the game to play. Under-twenty graduates, Francesco Pio Esposito and Valentín Carboni combined to spare their blushes against the Japanese team.

Monterrey had caused frustration to Inter and would do the same to River Plate in their second match. The Argentine side had eighteen shots to Monterrey’s three, only for the game to finish goalless. Marcelo Gallardo has been back in the dugout for a year, after an uninspiring seven months at Al-Ittihad. No longer has the River Plate coach been directly linked to landing big jobs in Europe, but Gallardo is still relatively young in his managerial career.

Chivu made five changes from the team that beat Urawa Red. Francesco Acerbi and Alessandro Bastoni returned . . .