I can assure you, many raised their eyebrows when Spalletti announced Andrea Ranocchia as starter for the match against Rapid. And 20 minutes into the match, also thanks to Andrea, Inter sweep past the Austrian team.
In the past week, with Icardi been stripped of the captaincy of Inter, some of the focus went back on Andrea who turned 31 in the following days from that 13th of February.
In a recent interview with the digital entrepreneur and public speaker Marco Montemagno, Andrea spoke about how the negative public opinion can have an influence on a football player, as it happened to himself once in that short period of time he was Inter captain.
Andrea felt “labelled” and it took years to “clean his name”. Public opinion was “all against him” and it felt like “walking the plank”. He “wasn’t ready”, he couldn’t “pulling away from the outside, from social media” because criticism impacted on him and “those thoughts penetrated” him, causing him to “lose control” making him feel “like a fool”.
It was his move to Hull to help him stepping back and rebuild himself “day by day, brick on brick”. He also compared how supporters feel the game, where in England “they enjoy the show ends with the final whistle” and in Italy “they keep talking after it”.
When asked about differences between small teams and big teams dressing room, he said:
“In big clubs, it is hard to spend free time all together. There are small clans and people who likes to be alone. Personality are strong, ego is fed by newspapers and it is hard to create one group.”
And about ego: “Ego impacts on human relationships. There are economical aspects involved. Top players are like companies. Every club applies internal rules, on site and off site such as training hours, diet, rules for social media and newspapers. But if you play for Inter, everything is amplified, you’re constantly in the eye of the storm. Everything you post or like build a case.”
Sounds familiar?
