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FRANK de Boer seems to have been a victim of expectant and trigger happy owners after being sacked just 85 days into his reign as manager of Inter Milan.
The Dutchman always stressed that, after years of underperforming, it would take time to establish Inter back among the best in Serie A.
But, just 48 hours before taking on Saints at St Mary’s in a crunch Europa League group stage match, De Boer was dismissed as boss.
On departure he stated: “It’s a shame it ended this way. To carry out this project I needed more time.”
His record was poor. There was no doubting that. The only plus point of his short tenure was a victory over Juventus.
De Boer had won just five of his 14 games in charge – one of those being the 1-0 home win over Saints two weeks’ ago.
The former Ajax boss leaves Inter 12th in the Italian top flight after their fifth defeat in 11 league games at Sampdoria on Sunday.
The 1-0 loss was the Nerazzurri’s fourth defeat in their last five Serie A matches and left them 13 points adrift of leaders Juve.
They are also bottom of Europa League Group K.
De Boer has ultimately paid the price for a poor start and felt the wrath of ambitious owners keen for success.
The club’s Chinese owners, the Suning Holdings Group, have piled money into getting Inter back to the very top of Italian football and into the Champions League, which they haven’t been for five years.
In the summer they spent nearly 100m Euros on talent like Joao Mario, Antonio Candreva and Brazilian midfielder Gabriel.
The squad at De Boer’s fingertips was expensively assembled and the owners wanted to see the results of that.
Unfortunately, as with many projects like this, it isn’t always easy to gel a new team together quickly.
But time in football, especially at the highest level, is limited. Very limited.
De Boer arrived just two weeks before the start of the Serie A season, which gave him little time to implement his ideas. He was already setting himself up for a fall.
Claude Puel, in contrast, came to Saints in June, about six weeks before the start of the Premier League season.
Even when the Premier League campaign began, Puel hadn’t finished shaping his side.
After a few weeks Saints were still finding it hard to adapt to Puel’s diamond 4-4-2, but it eventually worked, the players learned and the system clicked.
Puel had a good amount of time to do that grafting, De Boer did not.
But when money is spent, expectations are high and that puts further emphasis on instant success.
Always under pressure, there were also signs that perhaps De Boer wasn’t commanding much respect in the dressing room.
He fell out with influential star Eder after the Italian international reacted angrily to being substituted against Sampdoria, snubbing De Boer’s offer of a handshake as he came off.
It will now be interesting to see how Inter react without a manager.
Youth team coach Stefano Vecchi will take temporary charge while a permanent replacement is found.
The club’s owners have been looking into bringing in a foreign manager, with Laurent Blanc, Andre Villas Boas and Louis van Gaal linked, but Inter’s Italian directors are keen on Lazio coach Stefano Pioli.
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