It's a good thing Rafael BenÃtez claims not to read newspapers. Positive headlines have been hard to come by these last few weeks but it was an advert, not an article, in Sunday's Gazzetta dello Sport that spoke most pointedly to the Internazionale manager's position. At the end of three pages dedicated exclusively to his team was a full-page advert for Paluani panettone.
For weeks the Italian press have been asking whether the Spaniard will be around long enough to enjoy a slice of the Milanese Christmas cake. After Inter's final Serie A game of 2010, it feels like a case of so near, and yet so far. Beaten 3-1 by Lazio at Stadio Olimpico, Inter have slid to 10 points behind the league leaders Milan. Should next week's strike be called off (more on that later), the gap could stretch to 16 points before the Nerazzurri's next Serie A fixture.
BenÃtez is now indisputably on the brink, a man, as La Stampa put it, "walking with a pistol at his temple". Everything rests on the next two weeks. On Friday Inter fly to Abu Dhabi for the Club World Cup, which they will join at the semi-final stage. The Inter owner Massimo Moratti had declared before the latest defeat that he would rate the season so far as a 6.5 out of 10, but "if we win the Club World Cup, I will add 3.5".
Moratti was watching when Inter became the first Italian team to win its predecessor, the Intercontinental Cup, in 1964, and victory this time would make them the first Serie A side to win five trophies (including the pre-season SuperCup) in one calendar year. The desire to see this team crowned kings of the world is palpable. Despite tough economic times, more than 2,000 supporters are making the trip to Abu Dhabi. Among them will be a group of Curva Nord Ultras carrying 3,000 flags and 8,000 decorated pieces of card to be used in pre-match choreography.
But if the owner has made it plain international glory is his priority, that does not mean he is content with events at home. He was described by Gazzetta as "serenely livid" on Sunday – caught between fury at another loss and excitement about the next fortnight.
Moratti's most consistent complaint about BenÃtez's Inter has been that they lack sufficient desire, the "rage", as he has repeatedly put it, to grind out a result. Inter have committed fewer fouls (179) this season than any other team in Serie A and also have the fewest yellow cards (19). Lazio were not dirty on Friday but the physicality of players like Matuzalém and Stefan Radu knocked several in the Inter line-up out of their stride.
Nor will Moratti stand for excuses about absent players. Inter have suffered 42 separate injuries already this season, with Dejan Stankovic becoming the latest victim when he limped off in the first half clutching his thigh, but Moratti subscribes to the view that BenÃtez is at least partly to blame. The manager's training methods are markedly different to those of his predecessor, focusing heavily on gym work where 90% of José Mourinho's sessions involved working with a ball.
But if the headline-writers were able to proclaim on Saturday that it was Lazio, not Inter, who looked like the best side in the world then Moratti, too, has to take his share of the blame. Not for the first time this season Lazio were inspired by Hernanes, the summer signing from São Paulo who has taken Serie A by storm. A player who the Times ranked in January 2009 as the most promising in the entire world. A player who should have belonged to Inter.
The Nerazzurri had secured a first option on Hernanes in the spring, but when Serie A's rules were changed in the summer to prevent teams from signing more than one player from outside the EU, they decided to go in a different direction, signing the 18-year-old Coutinho from Vasco de Gama instead. Out yesterday with an injury, Coutinho has shown enough promise to suggest he may yet have an exciting future at Inter. Hernanes, though, is enjoying a thrilling present.
Depending on your source, Hernanes is either the "new Kaka", "another Deco" or the "Brazilian Andrea Pirlo". Such comparisons are rarely helpful but the fact they are being made is a tribute to the composure and grace with which he dictates play from the centre of the park. All through his childhood, Hernanes used to sleep hugging a football so that he would know where it was when he woke up. With such familiarity, it should perhaps come as no surprise that player and ball seem so comfortable in each other's company.
On Friday the Brazilian was at the heart of everything for Lazio. Mauro Zárate might have drawn more attention for the manner he tormented the 18-year-old right-back Felice Natalino, but while he was also superb it was Hernanes pulling the strings. It was the Brazilian's header, parried by Luca Castellazzi but never properly cleared, that allowed Giuseppe Biava to put Lazio ahead, his perfect cross-field pass that put Zárate in for the second, and his free-kick which settled the game just when Inter had been threatening to snatch an equaliser.
The match was Hernanes's 58th of 2010, but unlike an Inter team still recovering from their treble campaign, he denied any sense of exhaustion. "I wouldn't even dream of saying I'm that," he insisted when asked if he wasn't feeling a little tired. "I'm a young man."
BenÃtez, by contrast, looks older by the week.
Talking points
• Inter may be in a poor run of form, but there has still been much anger in Italy after Gazzetta dello Sport reported that Wesley Sneijder has not even made the top three in the Ballon D'Or voting despite his starring role in the team's treble and Holland's run to the World Cup final. "It is absurd," railed Javier Zanetti yesterday. "Wesley is a fantastic player. It would be truly disappointing to not see him among the top three."
• Victory took Lazio (who hadn't beaten Inter in the league since 2003) joint-top on Friday night, but Milan moved back ahead of them with a 3-0 rout of Brescia on Saturday. Zlatan Ibrahimovic was brilliant, again, setting up the opener and smashing home a fine third, but the novelty this week was Kevin-Prince Boateng in place of Clarence Seedorf as a trequartista behind the attack. He did a pretty good job, too, scoring the first and making incisive runs early on. Seedorf will remain the first-choice, but it is ever more clear that this Milan team is blessed with depth far beyond most of its rivals.
• Juventus remain third, six points off the leaders, after becoming the first team this season to win away to Catania. It certainly helps to have Fabio Quagliarella in this sort of form. Napoli can pull level with them if they win tonight, but they face a Palermo side only one point behind in what some over-eager hacks are already trying to bill as a Champions League play-off.
• Lecce's miserable week ended on a suitably low note. On Tuesday the team's owner Pierandrea Semeraro confirmed he had refused the manager Luigi De Canio's offer to resign following the club's poor start to the season, then on Thursday a group of Ultras stormed into a training session and started abusing the defender Souleymane Diamoutene for being a "dirty Barese" - a reference to him having spent time on loan with rivals Bari last season. The player himself later insisted the abuse had not been racist, though the line between racism and attitudes across Italy towards people from other towns or regions is a pretty blurred one. In any case Diamoutene was left out of the side on Sunday, and Lecce lost 3-1 to Genoa.
• Antonio Di Natale's surname translates as "of Christmas", so we probably shouldn't be surprised at his good form at this time of year. He now has seven goals in four games. Sadly for him Parma's Hernan Crespo is in a similarly fine vein of form, scoring twice to give his team the points and take his own tally to five goals in his last three appearances.
• Adrian Mutu might be one of few people hoping the Serie A strike does go ahead next weekend, even after scoring his first goal since his doping ban ended in October. "I can't wait for 2010 to end," he said at full-time.
• Both sides have given indications that it is not too late for the players' strike to be prevented, but it is hard to see how the present impasse will be broken. The footballers' main union, the Italian Players' Association, is refusing to even negotiate any longer over the two points of contention: the owners' right to make individual players train apart from their team-mates (effectively freezing them out), and the owners' right to force players to accept a transfer.
Some players, though, are unhappy that things have gone this far, and a small group, led by Gigi Buffon and Lazio's Stefano Mauri, have even set up a new union – the National Players' Association. They argue that there are many measures short of a strike they would have preferred. The group is too small to have an impact on negotiations at this stage, though, and for games to go ahead next weekend will require Sergio Campana, head of the existing Italian Players' Association, to show himself willing to return to the negotiating table.
Results: Catania 1-3 Juventus, Cesena 0-2 Bologna, Chievo 2-2 Roma, Fiorentina 1-0 Cagliari, Lazio 3-1 Inter, Lecce 1-3 Genoa, Milan 3-0 Brescia, Parma 2-1 Udinese, Sampdoria 3-0 Bari.
