A few minutes before the start of Inter-Torino, a match valid for the first day of Serie A, the Nerazzurri president Beppe Marotta spoke to the microphones of Sky Sport. These are his statements about the transfer market and the lack of search for a new defender.

OBJECTIVES – “Inter starts by respecting the history of this glorious club, knowing that we have to fight with worthy opponents. The goal is to give our best to win some trophies.”

TRANSFER MARKET – “From Lookman to Diouf? Let’s start from a very strong consideration, we have turned down some requests to sell our best players. Secondly, we tried to seize opportunities in this Italian market, we have to consider Italian football as second tier, you can’t do crazy things. There was talk about Lookman and I don’t deny it, but we found a club like Atalanta that had every right not to put him on the market. So it was an opportunity, then we focused on the new investment model of young players and we took five, one of whom is from our youth sector, we are shaping a squad in line with the plans of the ownership and the club.”

SEARCH FOR DEFENDER – “At the moment we are not looking for a defender because we don’t have the need, there are about 10 days left and we will see if there are opportunities, but I don’t see any. The team is strong, the defensive department is made up of reliable elements, then it may happen that a player wants to leave and we will replace him, but I don’t foresee any radical changes.”

CHIVU – “Rightly, we first identified the profile of the coach suitable for our model, we found in Cristian Chivu all the components we were looking for. Sense of belonging, the fact that he successfully coached Inter’s youth sector having won titles, a mentality that fully matched our philosophy. We made a choice that is not a fallback. Fabregas was one of the candidates as you do in a company, then the choice fell on Chivu because he had the requirements we were looking for.”

IMPROVED TEAM – “I don’t know about that, the change of coach changes the formations and training sessions. Today we lack a comparison with our competitors. Napoli are the reigning champions, they are the strongest team and must defend the title, they are the authoritative candidate for victory. We have the obligation to be protagonists, but I believe the team is strong, that’s for sure.”

THURAM’S DROP AT THE END OF THE SEASON – “Last year he had muscular issues, he was never at 100%, so we saw a performance that was not equal to that of the previous year. Today I believe we have an offensive squad that gives the coach the opportunity to manage substitutions better. The rotation, the fact of being able to use more turnover, will be more frequent than last year.”

Later, the president of Inter also spoke to the microphones of DAZN, making the following statements.

YOUNG PLAYERS – “Ours is an evolutionary process, we didn’t want to make a revolution but to make our model a bit younger. Five players have joined and four have been bought, plus one who came from the youth sector. What matters is that the average age of these guys is 21.4 and the overall average age of the squad has dropped.”

LEONI – “In our opinion, the defensive department is now well stocked both numerically and in terms of quality to withstand the competitions and ambitions. We do not foresee sensational moves, if there is any player leaving we will replace him but for now we are going ahead like this.”

DIOUF – “We believe we must seize the opportunities that the market offers like this one. We have a player who can adapt to the needs of the coach and has different characteristics. On Lookman, Atalanta rightly chose not to put him on the market and so this operation did not find the conditions for a negotiation and then we continued the search for young talents who could adapt, all in harmony between the technical area and the coach.”