“Mourinho escaped to Madrid and I will never forgive him”

Inter Milan brushes the league championship with their fingertips: they score eleven points from Atalanta with five days to go. In this way, he will end the tyranny of Juventus in Serie A and will raise again a title that he has not achieved since José Mourinho left the team. neroazurro in 2010. That Inter won the treble, Scudetto, Coppa and Champions, but was losing pieces until going through a reconstruction process that Antonio Conte is close to completing. That goodbye to Mourinho is something that still stings Ernesto Paolillo, Interista general director at the time.

“My biggest regret was not having followed through with my initial idea, which was to dismantle the team. He was champion, but he was tired and empty. And Mourinho, who knew it well, escaped the same afternoon of victory and I never forgave him that “, acknowledges in an interview with the Italian portal Calciomercato. The one from Setúbal won everything, in the final they dismantled Bayern Munich (0-2) and had previously done the same with Guardiola's Barça, something that lit the flame of a rivalry that marked their passage through Madrid.

But Mourinho's departure was related, as Paolillo was advancing, with Inter's future plans. “He was convinced that this equipment should be dismantled for ethical reasons. You cannot win a Champions League and go out in front of the cameras to ask for a raise (referring to Diego Milito). But Moratti told me, 'What if we don't win after dismantling it and the fans blame me?“, adds the ex-director.

Doubts with Benítez

Mou would be replaced by Rafa Benítez, although the idea that the former director general of the entity had was very different: “I thought it would be good to start over and with a coach other than Benítez, someone who knew how to rebuild the team and start from scratch. If you had an idea in mind? Conte. We talk about it after a game. It was clear to him, but the problem was that at that moment the president, after Mourinho, did not want to bring in a former Juventus player “. It took several years to see Conte sitting on the bench, but the circle was finally closed the way Paolillo pretended back in 2010.