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For the first Derby d’Italia in a while, Juventus headed to their Milanese rivals looking the stronger side. After an abysmal start to the season under the unsuitable Gian Piero Gasperini, new coach Claudio Ranieri is still yet to turn the Inter ship around, and fortunes didn’t seem to be swaying in their match-up against the Turin giants. With Gasperini’s 3-4-3 clearly not working, Ranieri opted for a 4-3-1-2, while Antonio Conte went for a fairly narrow 4-3-3, with striker Mirko Vucinic and the defensive Simone Pepe as the wide players in the three. The narrow play meant two areas became particularly important in the match for contrasting reasons: the flanks because of the large space afforded to the full-backs, and the heavily packed midfield. Although notationally Juve’s formation appeared to show them playing with more width than Inter, the choice of players meant Inter had more players out wide. Vucinic and Pepe generally looked to come inside (fig. 1), whereas Ranieri used Javier Zanetti and Joel Obi as carrileros, both of whom are comfortable in wide positions. This meant that although Vucinic and Pepe could defend against Yuto Nagatomo and Maicon, Zanetti and Obi could still pull wide to [...]
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