Once a dominating presence in the middle of the Inter defense, Milan Skriniar seems on the verge of leaving La Pinetina for good. The 25-year-old Slovakian has been included in any possible swap-deal rumor concerning the Nerazzurri this summer or as a mean to get some cash to reinvest in players more in line with coach Antonio Conte’s needs.
According to multiple sources, Inter are now in talks with Tottenham to offload Skriniar to the Premier League side, though the Nerazzurri’s 60M-euro price tag is being deemed excessive by the Spurs.
Regardless of how the negotiations with Tottenham end, there is reason to believe that Skriniar’s days at Inter are coming to an end in one way or another. At 25, he needs some good playing time but his last few months in black-and-blue clearly showed that he is no longer part of Conte’s plans – if ever he was.
But how could this happen? In the space of one season, Skriniar’s status at Inter changed from a solid starter into an outcast that his club would gladly get rid of. A quite unexpected turning point for a defender who was billed as the Next Big Thing coming out of the Serie A after an impressive maiden season at Sampdoria.
The Nerazzurri had swooped in and secured his services in the Summer of 2017 for a considerable 34M euro fee. Those seemed money well spent, however, as in his first season at Inter the Slovakian found the back of the net 4 times out of 38 caps – an impressive tally for a center-back – on top of establishing himself as one of the most fearsome defenders in the top-flight.
Under Luciano Spalletti’s direction, the Slovakian was part of an insurmountable center-back duo alongside Miranda in the coach’s four-man defense. Over the course of the 2017-2018 season, he did not miss a single Serie A minute, playing in each game from the start to the end. He seemed to be Inter’s “New Wall,” the natural heir to Walter Samuel when it comes to attitude and style of play – as the Argentine himself once recognized in an interview to the Gazzetta dello Sport.
But then, something started to go wrong already in the following season. On one hand, the Nerazzurri didn’t manage to improve their fourth position in the table from the previous campaign. On the other hand, the Serie A 2018-19 saw the rise of Stefan De Vrij at Inter as the Dutch defender slowly made his way into Spalletti’s starting lineup – pushing Miranda on the sidelines.
Skriniar himself was not directly affected by the rise of the Dutchman and still enjoyed a solid season as he collected 35 Serie A appearances, but failed to make it to the scorecard this time. Which, again, could have been pretty normal for a regular center-back – if one failed to mention that during his last two seasons with Zilina in the Slovakian Super Liga he had scored six and four respectively.
From a mindset point of view, something seemed to have changed in the Slovakian international’s mind. Skriniar had collected only three yellow cards in his maiden season at Inter, which became eight in the following campaign. But the worst was yet to come.
Antonio Conte replaced Luciano Spalletti at the helm of the Beneamata in the summer of 2019, and with the new coach came a change of module that ultimately doomed Milan Skriniar’s chances at Inter. Conte lined up his Nerazzurri with a 3-5-2 module, resorting to a three-man defense that initially featured Skriniar and de Vrij alongside new joiner Diego Godin.
The 33-year-old veteran defender, however, initially fell victim to Conte’s system as he was ditched after a few games in favor of Alessandro Bastoni. The 21-year-old young sensation seemed to be a natural fit to Conte’s demands to an exterior center-back, which included supplying the strikers with long-range balls and advancing up to the midfield line when necessary.
But, as the weeks went by, Godin slowly rebuilt his confidence and understood Conte’s mechanisms – which in turn Skriniar was struggling to assimilate. With Stefan De Vrij being untouchable as the cornerstone of Conte’s three-man defense and Bastoni now fully integrated in his project, the Slovakian saw his playing time reduced dramatically as Diego Godin won back his starting spot.
After the post-lockdown restart, Skriniar started to fall off Conte’s radar, especially after a couple of dreadful performances against Sassuolo and Verona and saw more and more games from the bench – including the last four key Europa League games. He ended the season with no goals again, nine yellow cards, and one expulsion against Sassuolo that costed Inter a lot.
The demise of Milan Skriniar in this past season are certified by the numbers: The Slovakian not only did worse in terms of two key stats that used to be the specialty of the house – clearances (3.51 vs 5.81 in the past season) and aerial duels won (1.19 vs 1.46). He also declined in terms of percentage of long-pass completion (80.1% vs 85.4%) which is a key Conte requirement from his defenders.
Skriniar has been on Inter’s transfer list since the end of the season and not even the sale of Diego Godin to Cagliari – who had been his natural substitute in the past few months – seems to have made Conte change his mind and keep the Slovakian in his project.
The Nerazzurri will make their Serie A 2020-2021 debut tomorrow night against Fiorentina and, with Stefan De Vrij serving a one-match ban, Conte seems ready to deploy Danilo D’Ambrosio and new-joiner Aleksandar Kolarov alongside Alessandro Bastoni at the back. Milan Skriniar will be sitting on the Inter bench, a clear hint that it may be for the last time.