Shortly before Manchester City beat Inter Milan in the 2022-23 Champions League final, Pep Guardiola was asked what was different about his side that made them such strong contenders.
“I learned this season when you play against Bukayo Saka, Vinicius Junior, Gabriel Martinelli and Mohamed Salah or Sadio Mane, you need a proper defender to win duels one-v-one,” he said. “In the Champions League, at that level, they only need one action to beat you.” But that wasn’t a major factor against Inter that night in Istanbul. And it wasn’t a major factor against them on Wednesday in both sides’ opening match of the 2024-25 Champions League, either.
Inter came to Manchester and, in one sense, held on for a 0-0 draw — City spurned some fine chances — but in another sense, Inter should have won the game. Mehdi Taremi could have done better on a couple of occasions. Henrikh Mkhitaryan blasted a shot over late on. A couple of needless offsides thwarted promising attacks, and, most obviously, Matteo Darmian bafflingly decided to backheel the ball to absolutely no one when practically through on goal.
Almost all of Inter’s dangerous moments came from direct breaks — either counter-attacks in the traditional sense or flowing passing moves after springing past City’s press and driving forward.
Yet they managed to do this despite almost never attempting to dribble by an opponent. The post-match statistics showed that only once did an Inter player, Marcus Thuram, complete a ‘take-on’ (defined by Opta as “an attempt to beat an opponent when a player has possession of the ball”). Equally, City managed this only once themselves, through Josko Gvardiol.
This was a typical Inter match. And as a general footballing rule, Italy has never been a nation of dribblers. A country that stresses the importance of defensive solidity in the game, compactness and getting results has traditionally been sceptical about wingers, the players most associated with dribbling. Italy has preferred to indulge superstars in the No 10 role. Wide players are tasked with getting up and down, protecting the full-back behind them as much as beating the opponent they’re facing.
There have probably been no top-class Italian wingers in the 21st century, but plenty of top-class Italian players in every other position. Few sides epitomise this notion more than Simone Inzaghi’s Inter, who are a likeable and very good team.
Crowned Serie A champions by a distance last season, they also play in a manner that feels suited to cup competitions. Inzaghi’s results in knockout football as coach at Lazio and Inter have been excellent. He guided this team to that 2023 final against City.
Inter offer almost everything: defensive strength, brave build-up play, guile in midfield, combination play up front and late runs from wing-back. But their players almost never dribble past their opponents.
As the below graph shows, only three clubs scored in their domestic league last season at a higher rate than Inter — City and the German duo of Bayern Munich and Bayer Leverkusen. And overall, there is a predictable correlation between sides who score lots of goals and sides who dribble past opponents — but Inter are the absolute outliers. They attempted the fewest number of dribbles from the 96 sides across Europe’s five major domestic leagues last season.
Part of this is due to the system.
Inzaghi used a 3-5-2 in every league game last season and shows little sign of trying anything different in this one. If you use a system without wingers, your players probably will not attempt many dribbles. But this is a chicken-and-egg scenario: Inzaghi’s formation preference could reflect his lack of interest in dribblers, rather than simply being the cause of his lack of dribblers.
And while Inter are outliers in European terms, they are merely an extreme reflection of their nation. It comes as little surprise that Serie A featured the fewest attempted — and completed — dribbles per game last season. Genoa, Monza and Roma, all of whom played 3-5-2 for at least part of 2023-24, were also among the least dribbly sides in Europe.
What Inter do offer, it should be clarified, is ball-carrying ability. Taremi and Thuram, their strike duo at the Etihad last night, are both capable of receiving the ball and driving forward into space — generally backed up by a couple of other runners — although they are not actually ‘tricky’ or likely to weave past opponents. When faced by City defenders, Taremi always elected to pass, sometimes frustratingly so. Lautaro Martinez, club captain but only fit enough to be used from the bench yesterday, can shoot effectively on the run, although his dribble success rate last season was one of the worst in Serie A.
In deeper positions, Nicolo Barella is capable of the odd dribble, although he is more renowned as an off-the-ball runner. That is also the role played by the two wing-backs, although for this game Inter were without Federico Dimarco down the left, and on the right used the more defensively solid Darmian rather than a genuine speedster in Denzel Dumfries.
But what Inter do excellently, at times, is play lightning-fast passing moves that cut through the opposition. Regardless of who Inzaghi starts up front, the two strikers always play impressive combinations to one-two their way past opponents.
In deeper zones, when playing out from the back, the three centre-backs take up ludicrously advanced positions, almost swapping roles with midfielders Hakan Calhanoglu and Piotr Zielinski. Left-sided Alessandro Bastoni sometimes became a left-winger, Yann Bisseck did something similar on the right, while Francesco Acerbi became a holding midfielder.
When Inter lost possession — as they did on a few occasions — they were in big trouble. But it also proved effective, at times, in terms of getting past City and feeding the ball to their strikers. It also shows that Inzaghi’s side are happy to take some risks.
Next up for Inter is the big one: Sunday’s Derby della Madonnina against their troubled city rivals Milan.
This could be a derby of complete contrasts. If Inter are anti-dribblers, Milan’s attacking spark comes from Rafael Leao, who, at his best, goes past opponents with ease. And whereas Guardiola purred about the way Inter’s centre-backs defended the six-yard box, Liverpool counterpart Arne Slot targeted Milan’s lack of aerial power as his side scored twice from set pieces in a comfortable 3-1 Champions League win at San Siro on Tuesday.
Inter are favourites to beat Milan on Sunday. They are also favourites to win Serie A again this season — despite, or maybe because of, that lack of dribbling ability.
(Top photo: Alex Pantling — UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)
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