Ausilio: “Winning is never easy, Conte is the secret ingredient”

Appiano Gentile - The reunion of the Inter squad at Suning Training Centre in Appiano Gentile represented the moment for players and staff alike to celebrate Inter’s 19th Scudetto. A historic achievement, as recounted by Sporting Director, Piero Ausilio, to Sky Sports: “We met back up and all wanted to hug one another and celebrate our victory. In the last few years there has been some suffering, so now it is the right time to party.”

“Winning is never easy. The timetable of the journey that we have been through with the Zhang family has, in my view, been the right one: there was a lot of structural reorganisation to be done on a business level and there were tough choices to be made between change and continuity. The arrivals of Marotta and Conte were two steps that allowed us to grow, and reach this point. I saw Steven Zhang’s incredible happiness today - it is truly something to be a Scudetto-winning President at that age. 

“The journey began with Vecino’s famous goal against Lazio, which permitted us to return to the Champions League. Conte, then, took everything up a level. Allow me to explain: our squad is excellent, it is full of very good footballers, but Conte would have made a difference wherever he went. It is our great fortune to have him here with us: we will be hanging on to it, because we need that mentality, personality and ability to handle pressure that he brings. Conte is the secret ingredient for a club that already had such excellence in every aspect.”

“Last season, we already felt that something special was building: coming second in the League, reducing the gap with Juventus, reaching the Europa League final. That was work that I always felt would soon bear fruit. However, we never rested on our laurels, we began work on this season straight away and now we can enjoy this extraordinary success.”

“We are not really thinking about the future yet, because we want to take our time to enjoy this amazing triumph: at the end of the day, we only won the league a few days ago and we still have four games before the end of the season to try to finish up with as many points as possible. We want to experience this moment with our fans, who ordinarily would have filled our stadium. Obviously, we are all well aware of the historic moment that the world is going through, both within and outside of football. But right now what we are focused on is celebrating.”