/ 30 January 2004

‘Il Gentleman’ steps aside

Honesty and empathy are rare virtues in the world of football and were even rarer after the resignation of Massimo Moratti as Inter Milan president on Monday. The 58-year-old oil billionaire is known as Il Gentleman of Italian football and the news of his departure brought about unification in a country where conflict seems to be the oxygen upon which the game thrives.

Roma captain Francesco Totti said that ‘the sport needs people like Moratti”, while Lazio president Ugo Longo expressed admiration for Moratti’s ‘loyalty, correctness and morals”. The Inter players were in shock and Alvaro Recoba said that life without Moratti was ‘unthinkable”.

Yet for all the eulogies and Moratti’s well-documented kindness towards players and staff, his legacy will be one of failure and a dreadful record in the transfer market. In his near nine-year reign as president, Moratti spent about £350-million on more than 100 players and changed coach 13 times without winning the Italian league title once. The biggest criticism of Moratti is that he has acted more like a fan than a president.

Moratti’s hands-on approach in transfer dealings has left coach after coach infuriated as their wishlists have ended up in the bin. The president’s favourite players on the pitch — Gabriel Batistuta, Youri Djorkaeff, Ciriaco Sforza, Roberto Baggio, Paulo Sousa and Recoba — are only a few examples of players, picked by Moratti, who have failed to live up to the president’s expectations.

Other transfers have bordered on the ridiculous. In recent years, Inter have engaged in some furious swapping with city rivals AC Milan that has seen Andrea Pirlo (Italy’s most promising play maker) and Clarence Seedorf (the only player to have won the Champions League with three different clubs) join Milan, while Francesco Coco, Thomas Helveg and Umit Davala have gone in the opposite direction.

Milan fans, meanwhile, can’t believe their luck and have started publishing books on Inter with titles such as You Never Win and set up innumerable websites to mock their less-fortunate rivals. One website, for example, features an animated figure of Moratti hitting his own genitals with a bludgeon.

It is supposed to signify the consistent stupidity and naivety of the Inter leader, and while Moratti is unlikely to have gone to such lengths to punish himself, he recently admitted that he has, more than once, questioned his own judgement.

‘There have been times when I have come back to my house at night after having spent 20, 30 or 40 millions of euros on a player and wondered whether I have done the right thing,” he said. ‘At first I am convinced by the necessity and determination of the cause. But then the doubts start to creep in and I put all the cards on the table and I start to wonder whether maybe I have made a mistake.”

Thankfully, Moratti has a very understanding wife, which is fortunate, as the £350-million taken from the household kitty has failed to deliver more than a paltry Uefa Cup in 1998.

‘My family and wife have never reproached me for the money I have spent, or said that I have spent unwisely,” Moratti said.

In the end, however, it seems that Moratti realised that his methods as a president were never going to bring success to the club. He had already brought in eight new players at the start of the season, sacked Hector Cuper as coach and replaced him with Alberto Zaccheroni, when the team lost spinelessly at home to Empoli last Sunday.

The defeat left Inter 11 points behind leaders Roma, and Moratti, in an endearingly open interview after his resignation, admitted that he had tried to change everything at the club but then came to the conclusion that the problem must be himself. He added that he was just fed up with losing.

As well as having tired of being portrayed as an eternal loser, Moratti must have been embittered by the treatment he has received from some of his former players, Ronaldo being the prime example. Moratti and Inter happily paid all the player’s wages as well as the medical costs while the Brazilian was injured for the best part of two years, only to be thanked with a transfer request and subsequent move to Madrid just months after the striker had regained full fitness.

There are also grumblings among Inter fans about the behaviour of Arsenal striker Kanu, who was treated for a serious heart condition while at Inter but then left for London when he was finally fit. Christian Vieri is a more recent case , the moody striker always enjoying the president’s support throughout a tempestuous two-and-a-half years at the club.

Moratti, meanwhile, has announced that he has no intention of selling the club, although he made it clear that he would not renege on the decision to quit as president, as he did in 1999 when he returned to his position after two months.

His decision to finally step down and out of the limelight not only ended the dream of winning the league as president of Inter, but also his ambition of emulating his father, Angelo, who won the Scudetto three times in the 1960s. Rarely does defeat have a more bitter taste than when it is compounded by the burden of paternal achievement.

Inter have now gone 15 years without winning the league. And while Moratti’s resignation signifies the end of an era, the search for silverware looks set to continue. —