Time for a little soccer digression. The season in Europe has started again and players union strikes in Italy and Spain appear to have been averted.

I root for my home teams – which means I root for DC United in MLS. I don’t have a ‘home’ team in the European leagues, but I do have my preferences.

Inter Milan is not one of them (if you’re curious, I tend to root for Juventus and AS Roma). But I am finding it sad how, since Jose Mourinho left his position there to manage Real Madrid, they keep on hiring new managers who move quickly to mess up a system that was previously working.

Under Mourinho, they played a 4-2-1-3. The ‘1’ was their playmaker and offensive engine, Wesley Sneijder.

When you play with three forwards up front, two of them play as wingers, staying wide and attacking either cutting towards the middle from wide positions or by playing the ball to the central striker from out wide. Mourinho used to strikers who were used to playing centrally in those winger positions, rather than true wide players. This could have been a disaster, but what he did was take away the traditional defensive responsibilities of a winger. Instead of asking them to track back a help out in defense, he tasked them with defending from the front by staying close to the opposition fullbacks, preventing them from joining the attack and keeping Inter’s defensive players from getting overwhelmed by numbers.

After he left, new coach Rafa Benitez immediately demanded that his two wide forwards track back to defend and also made Sneijder play a deeper role.

The result was not only three players playing roles they were ill-suited to play, but their striker left isolated, because the wingers were too far away because they were asked to run back and defend and because the playmaker was pushed back from his place as the link between the midfield and the attack.

So, they stunk.

Rafa was dumped and they started playing formations that, while less tactically innovative than Mourinho’s, kept folks in their comfort zone.

So, now they have brought in Gasperini who likes to play 3-4-3, completely upsetting the balance that been grudgingly achieved as the Rafa disaster.

Their defenders are too slow to play in a three man back lines, the wingbacks (the two outside players in the ‘4’ – you could also call them outside midfielders) are too old manage the physical demands of covering almost the entire sideline alone.

Oh, and there is no room for their offensive engine, Sneijder in this formation, unless he plays centrally, in the ‘4,’ in which case he is asked to defend too much (which his not suited to do, which means his partner in the middle winds up having to do it all, leaving the midfield easy for the opposition to overrun). He can also play wide in the ‘3’ but that is also a complete waste of his talents.

Mourinho had his favored formations, yes. But he also recognized that you must build a game plan based on the players you have and their talents. You can stretch them, adjusting their roles and making them try new things, but you can’t make them do things that they are either totally unsuited to do or that make no use of their true talents. Which is exactly what is happening now.

Fine. Go ahead and screw this up, Inter. I’m rooting for someone else anyway.