Quick Video Reminder: Inter Still Has Some Extremely Talented Players

"A continuance in a place where everything reminded her of former delight, was exactly what suited her mind. In seasons of cheerfulness, no temper could be more cheerful than hers, or possess, in a greater degree, that sanguine expectation of happiness which is happiness itself." – Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

Jane Austen was not a football fan. It’s not her fault – she had the misfortune of dying 50 years before the sport was invented. But based on the quote above, I have to assume she’d be thoroughly enraptured in the vicissitudes of the modern football transfer market. Look at most of the highly-trafficked football websites, and you see very little written about teams that actually exist, or matches that are actually played. No, reading football sites, there are times where you see nothing but article upon article about players who could join a team or could be leaving a team, all feeding into "the sanguine expectation of happiness which is happiness itself." You’ll also see quite a bit of all-time best XIs and great player retrospectives, those false continuances of former delights that ask whether Cruyff could have scored against Zoff with Maldini in the backfield.

To be a football fan, in other words, is to be in a state of perpetual dissatisfaction. The team you support is always fundamentally incomplete, missing that new star who could make them great if only the transfer market works out, or that old departed veteran who was here back when times were good. The players on your roster are never good enough, and the matches in front of you are inconveniences to be endured before the main event of the transfer market, and its attendant speculation, can begin.

Which is just my nauseatingly long-winded way of saying: dude, check out these two siiiick clips. This is Mateo Kovacic and Xherdan Shaqiri in international action over the past few days. These goals are amazing. And these are players that we have on our team…right now. We need a lot of things to go right for us in the summer transfer window to be a real force next season, and we'll be spending a lot of time talking about it, but these players are already here. And they can do things like this. Imagine if our coach could somehow get them to do things like this for us? Imagine how many problems that would solve.