"Oh my; not another Gabigol article!"

I can hear readers uttering these words at the sight of the above image. But a picture speaks a thousand words, or so they say. And if there ever was a picture that spoke volumes, this one's it. Well, perhaps it doesn't speak to everybody in a consistent tone, but it should resonate very loudly with Interisti.

This is because it embodies the fanfare that accompanied Gabriel Barbosa's transfer to Inter Milan. To Interisti, especially those of my generation and older, the spectacle was unmistakably reminiscent of that organised when the original Ronaldo arrived to don black and blue at the tender age of 21; Golden Ball in hand.

Needless to say, Gabigol's no Ronaldo. But that's not what this article's about. It's not about Gabigol. It's not about his lack of playing time, not about his lack of stature, not about his lack of professionalism. I'm not going to get into why he hasn't had any playing time at Benfica, whether he should go back to Santos, whether it's a mistake to let him go to Benfica B or anything of the sort.



Because that's what everyone else is talking about in relation to the young Brazilian, which in turn leaves what is - at least in my books - a proverbial elephant in the room. In other words, all of this talk distracts from the real issue at hand; one which should be troubling Interisti deeply and one which is not being discussed at all.

I'm talking about the last-minute decision made at the end of the summer transfer market of 2016; that which brought Gabriel Barbosa to Inter for a fee of €29.5m and handed him a 5-year deal worth a further €30m. More particularly, I'm talking about who it was who struck that deal. Hindsight is a beautiful thing, I know. But I cannot help but wonder what's going on at our club's helm when I hear our directors saying things like, "we need to sell before we're able to buy" and "we're missing our Financial Fair Play targets by approximately €60m." Really?! €60m?! Isn't that just half a million Euros more than we threw down the shitter on the Gabriel Barbosa deal? Isn't that something that should cause heads to roll? Doesn't that make whoever decided to go ahead with the Gabigol deal destined for the chopping block?

Perhaps I'm being a little harsh here. I mean, the player did play for the Brazilian national team at youth level and did quite well there too. He also did well for his club, Santos. He was courted by Barcelona, who initiated legal proceedings against Santos for striking a deal for Barbosa with Inter. So; again, perhaps I'm being a little harsh here but on the other hand, I expect our beloved club to be run with the sort of efficiency and effectiveness redolent of a private-sector organisation, not the permissive, ineffectual style of a Banana Republic's government office. The fact that nobody's head rolled after that deal is to me, very worrying. Why?

Because the fact that nobody's head rolled after that deal reveals three possible scenarios, none of which bode very well for Inter, albeit to varying extents. Firstly, let's exclude at the outset, the scenario in which Gabigol's services were requested by Inter's manager at the time. We all know De Boer was not the man behind the Gabigol deal. Secondly, we'd also have to agree to exclude the absurd scenario in which the Zhangs took counsel from individual sources outside the club and against the majority of the club members' (including the sponsors') best wishes and advice. No new owner in his right mind would do such a thing. It would have been suicide from a organisational/managerial standpoint and as I will argue below, the Zhangs are far from inept in that category.

With that out of the way, let's talk about the first possible scenario. If Piero Ausilio, Inter Milan's Sporting Director (DS), whose job it is to provide counsel to the club's directors along with the manager, in regard of who to buy and who to sell, as well as negotiate those deals, was the man who brought Gabriel Barbosa to Inter for a total of €60m, his head should (and would) have rolled with no questions asked. Blowing a vital €60m of the club's funds on a blind prospect is not an excusable decision.

A man in Ausilio's position should be given the freedom to take responsibility for that sort of deal, because his is a crucial position to the club and because the club must allow all of its members the freedom to exercise their allotted duty. Should the DS choose to take responsibility for that deal and fail however, his head must definitely roll. So, the first scenario is that of Ausilio having given the club the wrong counsel with regards to Barbosa, blowing an indispensable €60m of the club's funds in the process and remaining Inter's Sporting Director thereafter, which would indicate that our club is being run inefficiently.

Now, the fact that Ausilio's head remains firmly attached to his neck tells me that bringing Barbosa to Inter wasn't his doing. Ausilio's not one of the Zhangs' men after all. He was there before the moguls bought the club. He came with the territory. That tells me that if Ausilio was behind that transfer, we'd know about it. It would have been too easy a way out for the Zhangs to simply fire Ausilio, hold their hands up and say, "hey, he told us the boy was the next Neymar and made us blow €60m on him." It would have been too easy for the Zhangs to pull that move in May 2017, when they hired Walter Sabatini as their Technical Coordinator. But they didn't. Ausilio remains Inter's DS to this day, alongside Sabatini as DT. So, scenario one is hardly plausible.

The second scenario is one in which the decision was approved across the board; one in which the Zhangs, Ausilio, Zanetti, that moronic Indonesian dude who thinks we had three great Dutch players in the 80s and the majority of the rest of the club's directors voted in favour of bringing Gabigol to Inter Milan for a total of €60m. Needless to say, this would be unsettling for Interisti, because it would mean that even when the minds at the helm of our beloved club are pooled together, mistakes of the gravest nature can and will be made. However, if this was the case, I would say that all can and will be forgiven. Nobody's infallible and let's face it; considering the way player-prices have been on an exponential rise of late, €29.5m on a young Brazilian prospect who's done consistently well with the Brazilian national team at youth level isn't an unjustifiable deal, especially when considering what Gabigol's success at Inter would have meant for the club and its new owners.

Which brings us to scenario number three, which is the most troubling of all. This is the one in which the Zhangs took transfer matters into their own unschooled hands and made the decision to acquire Gabriel Barbosa against the board's and DS' advice. Why is this the most troubling scenario? Because it would reveal a dangerous, child-like attitude on the Zhangs' part towards the club. It would be a scenario analogous to that of a young, inexperienced trust-fund beneficiary taking over an exhibitionistic business (a nightclub for instance) for all the wrong reasons and running that business with all the prodigal exorbitance typical of a spoiled, self-indulgent brat. If this was the case, Interisti have much to worry about and to be perfectly honest, Mr Zhang junior's Black and Blue Pagani Zonda does not do much in the way of quelling suspicions that this third scenario was indeed the way things went down. Nor does the fact that Mr Mancini walked out on the project two weeks prior to the beginning of the 2016/2017 season, citing irreconcilable differences with the new owners.

To be fair, I feel that I must pay tribute to the very positive changes our new owners made to the club and its brand. They've done some great work since taking charge, managing to increase revenues significantly, while investing in the club's infrastructure and giving the club a much needed boost in the virtual sphere. They're running the club very, very well on most counts, ticking the vast majority of boxes. When it comes to organisational acumen, the Zhangs and their entourage are clearly more than just adept; they're masters even.

But when it comes to matters of football, something tells me that the same cannot be said of them. Therefore, on behalf of Interisti everywhere (if I may) all I ask of the Zhangs is that they leave matters of football to those who live and breathe them, while continuing to take the club forward from an organisational perspective. I know it's a lot to ask. It's their money after all and some might say that they should be allowed to invest, spend or blow it as they please. But I say, "no, they shouldn't be." They took the helm at an established, world-renowned sports club with a rich history and a fan-base numbering in the millions and with that, they took on a responsibility towards that history as well as those fans. Spending €30m on Gabigol is justifiable for a club like Barcelona, but for a club that one year later claims that it cannot buy a couple of much needed players before selling others, even though it boasts a very thin squad in comparison to most in its league, it's just not. Nor is wasting €40m on the likes of Joao Mario in the same transfer window that Ever Banega was acquired for free, only to send the latter (who did better with us than the former) back where he came from a year later. These decisions just don't make any sense whatsoever.

These weren't the only decisions however. There was one decision in particular that's deserving of a massive "hats off!" I'm referring to bringing Milan Skriniar to Inter Milan. Again, whose decision was that? We would really love to know. Who was the man behind Skriniar's coming to Inter? Who was it that put that idea forward? Who was it that pushed for the deal to go through? It must have come from someone. It's always a single person's idea to begin with. I'd love to know who it was. Whoever it was, that's who the Zhangs must take counsel from on market matters. That's a man who knows his football.

#ForzaInter