Massimo Moratti and a toy called “Inter”. (Part I)

Massimo Moratti was always something between a spoiled rich gay who buys players like an album stickers and a naïve football humanitarian from who the old and used stars collect money. He was lucky that in the family of rich people no one breathed behind his neck, always looking at the bright side of the story: at least his not running the family company.

Last years Champions League was marked with a triumph of vampire catenaccio, conceived in 1960s in Inter by the famous Helenio Herrera, over modern version of total football that Barcelona nourishes and some kind of legatee German industrial football of which last years Champions League finalist Bayern Munchen reminded of.

Arrogant feature on Inter’s bench which is currently the most famous name in Europe – Jose Mourinho, after big triumphs over Chelsea and Barcelona, gained a wide space in media across the world because he has beaten big names with Inter, a club that was for the last 15 years called eternal losers, but he also gained a lot more adversaries in football world because of his retro guard football ideology which reserved him a title of the only couch that won Champions League without a shot on goal. However, every next game was Mourinho’s new victory. Not just on the field. Every one, except the finals in Madrid against German Bayern.

Inter’s routine victory by Mourinho’s game plan, in which the Italians had less shots on goal and barely 30% of ball possession, symbolically was supposed to be the crown that the Portuguese has set himself up despite all football experts and fans across the world who prefer beauty over result. Eventually it turned out that this match had nothing to do with football ideology or Mourinho’s war against the whole world. It was Inter boss Massimo Moratti’s victory.

Moratti posed with the winner’s cup more that Mourinho, Milito, Et’o and Stanković together. After 15 years at the helm of Inter and more that billion of Euros spent, Moratti succeeded to fulfill his dream and become the champion of Europe. For years everyone in football world laughed on him for wasting so much money on bringing big players and, except for one Uefa Cup, not winning a single significant trophy. Even Scudetto was slipping out of his hands until Juventus wasn’t sent to second league, at the green table, and points were taken from Milan.

From Moratti’s mouth only one sentence is coming out these days: “This proves that work and persistence pay off eventually”. Winning the Champions League, although “without a shot at goal”, has enabled Moratti to bend the reality which, nevertheless, indicates that he is one of the most controversial rich guys in European football in the last two decades, that his “work and persistence” are just a delusion with whom he treats his rich vanity and that, considering all the money he spent so far, winning one Champions League is enough to say that his Inter Project isn’t a complete failure.

His era in Inter began 1994 when he used an opportunity to buy a club which his father Angelo, famous oil magnate, was running in 1960s, at the most glorious time of this club. Massimo is, otherwise, considered as some kind of black sheep in rich Moratti family. He is the fourth son of Angelo Moratti. Older Moratti’s Inter bossing was just in the time when famous Helenio Herrera was coaching them, and with development of bunker game which became famous by the name catenaccio, they were two times European champions.

Since he entered in the world of football, Massimo Moratti was always something between a spoiled rich gay who buys players like an album stickers and a naïve football humanitarian from who the old and used stars collect money. In his CV, besides functions of president and the owner of Inter, Massimo holds and the CEO position in family’s oil company “Saras”, which only on account of shares annually brings 100 million Euros to Moratti family. He is also present in the boards of Pirelli and Italian Telecom. However, his older brothers mostly run the family business. He is tasked to play with Inter. He grow up in some kind of aristocratic family which run the industrial recovery of Milan after the WWII. Since he was a kid, he supported Inter like higher class usually does in Italy. For years he was haunted with the fact that the period in which his father was running Inter was called “Grande Inter” and his period “Hard Times”. He practically opened an era in which eccentric rich guys are uncontrollably spending a lot of money on players. Ten years later, with the entrance of rich people from the East, in football, it will become a phenomenon. Moratti even managed to enter in the theory that is analyzed on sport universities, and which claims that hot supporters can’t perform well on the helm of a club because football is business, in the first place. Moratti was in love with the players he brought. He was bringing big stars although sometimes there weren’t any football justification for that. He was often bringing a lot of players that play on the same position, and mainly attackers and offensive midfielders. He was buying defenders without any strategy. At one moment in late 1990s he had 12 defenders in the team on which he spent more than 50 million dollars.

To read Massimo Moratti and a toy called “Inter”. (Part II), click HERE.