Guest in the studios of Sky Calcio Club, the head coach of Turkey and former Milan coach, Vincenzo Montella, spoke about Hakan Calhanoglu and his importance at Inter and beyond: “What happens when a player like Calhanoglu is missing? This is a huge problem, which I realized when I was coaching Fiorentina with Pizarro. Because the problem is not that you as a coach don’t have him, the team doesn’t have him. The team relies on him, Inter relies on him, Inter’s players rely on him: he sets the tempo, when to accelerate, when to slow down, and it’s the same with the national team. So the big problem with these great players is that when you don’t have them, you don’t just lose him, you lose a piece of the team. Because his teammates feel less secure.” These are Montella’s words, which almost sound like a warning for the future, given the rumors surrounding the midfielder whose contract with Inter expires in 2027.
The coach then adds: “Compared to when I coached him at Milan, when he was a number 10, an attacking midfielder, now in defensive trajectories, even when he doesn’t win the ball back, he’s always there. He’s always in the right diagonal, in the right coverage, he has become, in addition to his talent and technical quality in possession, also a player who defensively, he even enjoys winning the ball back, which is not an easy thing for a player of this level.”
