Inter, Chivu: "Success and failure are two 'bastards' to be treated in the same way. I am not an ideologue, between Napoli and Madrid I got it wrong"

Not much has changed from two years ago: I mention the opportunity they gave me at Parma and then the one at Inter. We are talking about a year and a half as a professional manager. On a human level I am the same person, I have the same ambition and passion: I keep trying to be the best version of myself that I can be, while passing on enthusiasm and passion for football. 

If I have managed to find some stability, it is thanks to the love of my family, who have stood by me through this year and a half, which has not been easy, even by my own expectations: I am lucky to have a wife who takes a lot of the off-field burden away and is curious about my world. She gets involved, wants to be with me and shares the bad moments too: she tells me off for the way I answer journalists, for the way I behave and for what she sees on the touchline, like the spitting.

"I've learned to be more steady in my convictions: for me, success and failure are two bastards that I treat in the same way. It's something I've learned: I don't compare anything and I don't get carried away when things go well, and I don't get depressed when they don't"

"Giving players rest, avoiding training camps? I don't know whether it takes courage, it takes understanding: I don't like dogmatism, I like new ideas. I don't coach for my own conscience, I coach for my lads, for the sensitivity I have in certain situations when I understand what is needed".

I'm not interested in judgments: sometimes I know the decision I make, like not doing the final training session, is because I know how much we spent in the previous match. I was more interested in recovery after Napoli, and you can also skip the final training session to preserve mental energy. Even now I believe I underestimated how much we drained ourselves mentally against Napoli by trying to get back into a match when we were 2-0 down, and then going to Madrid when we were lacking something in terms of energy: I should have given them half a day off, it would have done them good.