Inter Milan: Beppe Marotta, the specialist in 0€ shots

It has become his trademark. He even made it into an art. Every year, Giuseppe Marotta manages to recruit free players to become executives of his team. An architect of moves without transfer compensation which is verified once again. The Italian press is announcing that two new signings have already been made for next season: midfielder Piotr Zielinski and striker Mehdi Taremi. Special sign ? You will have understood, they are both at the end of their contracts, respectively in Naples and Porto.

A majority of successful shots

It’s another masterstroke carried out by the sporting director of Inter. The list is starting to look impressive. Last summer alone, Alexis Sanchez made his return after a brief stint with OM, Davy Klassen signed from Ajax, Juan Cuadrado came from Juventus and above all Marcus Thuram took on another dimension in joining the Nerazzurri after honing his skills for 4 years at Borussia Mönchengladbach. A real good pick since with his 10 goals and 11 assists in 31 matches, the Frenchman has amazed since the start of the season.

Of course, success is not always there but not all of these recruits come to occupy the same role within the workforce, as evidenced by last summer’s recruitment. And then the prospect of resale for a player who arrives free is also an asset not to be overlooked. Especially on the Inter side where financial difficulties are a chestnut. The previous summer, Marotta managed to sign Henrikh Mkhitaryan and André Onana who played a central role in this 2022/2023 exercise which saw the club reach the final of the Champions League.

A method already applied during his time at Juve

The Cameroonian goalkeeper only stayed for a year before being sold for €50 million to Manchester United. Other important elements during this famous C1 campaign, Edin Dzeko and Hakan Çalhanoğlu. They too arrived without direct transfer compensation. Inter simply had to pay a bonus of €1.5 million to Roma for the striker after qualifying for the Big Ears Cup, while the Turkish midfielder was pilfered from AC Milan. Strengthening your workforce also means knowing how to weaken that of your rivals, which Marotta still does regularly, as with Zielinski for example.

During his first year at Inter, the manager had less success with the signings of Alexis Sanchez and especially Diego Godin, already in pre-retirement. Marotta arrived from Juventus where he had already demonstrated his low-cost methods for a decade, like Lucas Toni in 2010, Andrea Pirlo the following year, Paul Pogba of course and Nicolas Anelka who arrived with Lucio in 2012 Fernando Llorente (2013), Kingsley Coman (2014), Sami Khedira (2015), Dani Alves (2016) and Emre Can (2018) are all examples and often successes making Marotta a specialist in the cheap transfer window.