Dear Ms Lewis,

it is with great pleasure that we, supporters of Inter, welcome you and all the other ‘foreign managers’ on board.

All nerazzurri are sure that the Club will soon benefit from your vast and deep expertise. As you surely will know by now, Inter has always defined itself as ‘brothers of the world‘ since its foundation back in 1908. It is therefore consistent, logical and even natural to pursue our goals regardless of nationality or origin, but only focusing on technical and human qualities of its players, managers and staff.

We simply believe that diversity is a strength and not a weakness, a quality and not a defect, a plus and not a minus.

Not only Inter has such diversity in its core: it is also different from any other Top Club in Italy, if not in the world.

If you look at Juventus and A.C. Milan in Italy, (not to mention Real Madrid in Spain) you’ll see great industrial, media and political interests behind these Clubs, and the outcome of such endorsements is hard to deny:

Newspapers, TV and new media are always very careful not to step on the ‘wrong’ toe.

Throughout the years, these Clubs have seen their victories blindly glorified and their defeats minimized as ‘just one of those things‘. I am sure you are aware of what Calciopoli has meant for the entire Italian Football, and this says a lot about the relationship linking those Clubs with referees, media and establishment.

On the other hand, Inter, despite being one of the top teams in Italy – never relegated, as we fans like to remind our black-n-white and red-n-black rivals -, has always been described for its naivety and its apparent incapacity to grow step by step and win trophies. When this eventually occurred – funnily just after the Calciopoli fuzz was discovered- , that’s when the lack of media appeal revealed its most negative aspect: it wouldn’t be fair to say that the importance of our successes from 2006 to 2011 was played down, but for sure critics were more than ready to emphasize the lack of Italian players in the squad or the rudeness of some statements from the Managers of those years. More than this, emphases was put on what critics defined as the informal way of running the Club which was one of the most recognizable aspects of Mr Moratti as a chairman.

It is curious that the same critics are now pointing their fingers to the new approach adopted by Mr Thohir, who is in turn accused of “taking Inter away from the Interisti” and stripping passion and typical Italian football attitude away from the Club.

For the same reasons, and as a fan, I would like to thank you instead. It is not the right time, nor the right place to analyze why and how football management rules have changed in the past few years; just let me say that this seems the only possible, logical and – hopefully – successful approach to adopt in this new adventure.

Being myself a fan, a reasonably media-obsessed fan, I just wanted to put my two cents in.

This is what you’ll have to expect from the media in Italy. There will always be something wrong to emphasize,  there will always be a good excuse to underrate victories and to criticize the players, the managers or the Executives, even if they’ve just arrived.

Be ready for this. And at the same time, please, respond to it. In your own way, but do react.

A kinda “we are Inter, brothers of the world. Who the hell are you?” attitude would be highly appreciated by the fans.

Once again, welcome. And Forza Inter!