Giuseppe Marotta speaks at shareholders' meeting

Behind me is the image that, one year ago, all of us would have wanted to be here today to open this presentation.

It is the most significant image, which encompasses our feeling of pride as Italian champions and getting Inter back to the place where the club deserves to be, given its history, tradition and the passion of the millions of fans in Italy and all over the world.

The last two seasons and the last two years of all of our lives have been deeply affected by the global pandemic. Its devastating impact has made our journey even more difficult and glorious, given that we have had to negotiate challenges posed by dramatic and extraordinary events.

The target that we set ourselves at the start of this cycle was to build a solid squad that was imbued with a sense of belonging and the values that set this club apart in order to develop over time the essential winning mentality that forms the basis of all success in football.

Our vision allowed us to immediately lay the foundations that enabled us to achieve impressive results going back to the campaign that was interrupted by the lockdown.

Winning our 19th Scudetto title rewarded our strategic vision, passion and commitment of our owners and President Steven Zhang, whose support has been unwavering throughout.

The planning behind this journey with a modern vision underpinned by more ethical club management does not just relate to Inter, but the entire football system that has been afflicted by chronic and structural problems that were made all the more evident by the pandemic.

This journey certainly needs to be bolstered by a constant collaborative dialogue with political and sporting institutions relating to crucial topics, such as the enhancement of resources, reducing labour costs by implementing a mechanism for taxation deferral, rebalancing the national and international sporting calendars to protect clubs and players, and boosting infrastructure. 

Inter’s commitment to and presence within the institutional world is geared towards developing these urgent and essential topics to guarantee continuity and a bright future for our sport.

With self-belief and pride linked to being Italian champions and interrupting a period of domination that had lasted for nine years in a row, we immediately immersed ourselves in the challenges presented by the new campaign.

We have chosen a fantastic young coach in Simone Inzaghi, who is also experienced and has tasted success. He is capable of furthering the technical project that we have embarked on and he shares our vision for the club. He accepted this new challenge with great enthusiasm, humility and ambition.

In perfect harmony with the owners, we have set ourselves the target of combining a policy for reducing costs and salaries – which is consistent with the club’s future strategy that is underpinned by stability and sustainable growth – with maintaining sporting competitiveness at the highest level.

Carefully targeted and significant transfer operations have taken place in keeping with the parameters that we had set ourselves. I would like to congratulate our Chief Sport Officer Piero Ausilio and everyone in the sports department on a sterling job.

Our Inter team is competitive and capable of competing on every front.

We know how tough it will be to replicate our success.

We know this campaign will be even harder than last year, with so many competitive clubs, but there can only be one winner at the end.

It has been a positive start to the season for us. Inzaghi has already stamped his mark on the team, as we are playing a brand of more flowing and attacking football. We knew we would have to face some difficult moments after the changes, but we are motivated by the challenge and this is just the beginning.

Taking on that challenge with the Scudetto badge on our chests gives us even more belief in our own ability.