WAITING for Ronaldo? One might as well be waiting for Godot. There seems little chance that The Phenomenon, as they call him in Italy, will play for Inter at Old Trafford in Wednesday's European Cup quarter-final first leg and no guarantee that he will even be on show for the return leg two weeks later at San Siro.
All last week at the Pinetina, Inter's spacious training ground, Ronaldo has been working urgently with Nilton Petroni, his personal physiotherapist, who has flown in from Brazil. On Tuesday, Ronaldo was working first in the swimming pool, then out on the field. By Friday, he was undertaking a full hour of training behind closed doors. But to what avail? Few in Milan expect him to make the Old Trafford match and as Mircea Lucescu, Inter's stop-gap Romanian manager, says: "Inter are not the same without Ronaldo."
But which Ronaldo? Since the disaster of the World Cup final, he has been little more than peripheral, playing so few games, seldom showing his stuff except in flashes. It's whispered that some of his teammates have lost patience with him, notably Diego Simeone, the Argentinian midfielder who will renew acquaintance at Old Trafford with David Beckham, the player he provoked into a foul that got him sent off when Argentina played England in the World Cup.
Not that they are likely to be often in direct contact. Simeone will play in centre midfield, as he did in Rome last Sunday, when Lazio deservedly beat Inter 1-0. Then, Simeone was assigned to mark Lazio's usually ebullient Roberto Mancini, which he did with substantial success, Mancini being forced deeper and deeper into midfield. But with Simeone to come up against Roy Keane, it will be a much more physical proposition. Sparks could fly.
Meanwhile, blessed are the peacemakers, a role one hardly associates with Simeone, but one he fulfilled in Inter's dressing room after the defeat in Rome. The Italian football correspondents, from whom no secrets are hidden, reported that the explosive Taribo West, the Nigerian defender, almost came to blows with Lucescu before Simeone stepped in "like a boxing referee".
There was, indeed, turmoil in the Inter camp, which suggests Manchester United might be on to a good thing on Wednesday. West, who might politely be described as a force of nature, one who ran away from home at the age of nine and scraped a living in any way he could until his talent as a footballer was revealed, had made the worst possible start with Lucescu.
In Lucescu's first game West, when he was substituted, threw his jersey in the manager's face. Last Sunday, sitting on the bench, he refused to go on as a late substitute as, surprisingly, did Nicola Ventola, the expensive young striker, though he, still out of form after long absence through injury, was eventually persuaded to change his mind.
Not so West, who stalked off to the dressing room before the game was over. Today, he is in Senegal, due to play there for Nigeria. Will Inter pick him on Wednesday? Will he be there if they do? Lucescu needs him, particularly in the absence of Dario Simic, the 23-year-old Croatian defender, who is cup-tied. West has said he wants a guarantee that he will play against United. This has not been forthcoming. Things are complicated by the fact that Mickael Silvestre, the young Frenchman who replaced him and scored the equaliser when he threw his shirt at the coach, may have recovered from his injury.
Giuseppe Bergomi, who sweeps behind two defensive markers, is rising 35. Fabio Galante lacks pace and is vulnerable in the air.
It's expected that Fabio Colonnese will move from the left flank, where he played against Lazio, into the back three, where his pace will be so useful, as, indeed, would be that of West. The question of whether Lucescu will be able to swallow his pride is overshadowed by that of whether West will go AWOL, as he has before.
Lucescu laments the fact that he has had so many players injured, and he is supported by Cesare Maldini, Italy's 1998 World Cup manager. I met him in his favourite restaurant, L'Assassino, and he said that for much of this season Inter have been without three or four of the best players in the world.
Inter's parts have for so long been greater than the whole, and it's hoped that at long last, when he arrives next season on his paltry £3m-a-year contract, Marcello Lippi, who recently walked out on Juventus, will be able to blend the various talents.
Lucescu's position has been almost intolerable since he arrived in mid-season. He came in bizarre circumstances, to replace Gigi Simoni, a coach very popular with his players, and especially with West, after whom he named his dog. Simoni must have felt rather like a Pavlovian dog himself, after the way Inter treated him.
Appointed in the summer of 1997, having been sacked by Napoli, he was nearly out the door before the campionato began, so poor were pre-season results, and his position trembled again when, at home in the opening League game, Inter went behind 2-0 to promoted Brescia. On, to save Simoni's skin, came the young Uruguayan Alvaro Recoba, whose two fine left-footed goals gave Inter a draw.
Simoni ran into choppy waters again this season, especially in Madrid, when, in a European Cup game, he left out Roberto Baggio, that eternal victim, and Inter lost 2-0. In the return match, Baggio played superbly. Inter won with ease, but struggled to beat Salernitana at home the following Sunday. Whereupon Massimo Moratti, the Inter president, sacked Simoni on the grounds that Inter's supporters deserved to see better football. Enter Lucescu, but only until the end of the season, when Lippi will arrive.
It was said that after the dressing-room fracas West and other players turned for help and comfort not to Lucescu but to the former Inter star, Sandro Mazzola. The tactful explanation was that Lucescu had left the dressing room for the press conference. The cynical reason is that Mazzola is in charge of Inter's transfer policy and the players are protecting their backs. Word has it that his influence caused Moratti to replace Simoni so abruptly and ruthlessly.
Moratti, besieged every day by the Italian football press like any major club president (the commendatore syndrome dies hard in Italy) operates under the formidable shadow of his late father, the great oil man, Angelo, of whom there stands a bust in the main room at the Pinetina. Beneath it is inscribed a fulsome eulogy which might do credit to a saint . . . or a dictator. Inter flourished under Angelo Moratti, but made few friends, especially abroad. As The Sunday Times proved years ago, in an investigation we called The Years of the Golden Fix, Angelo Moratti was deeply involved in the consistent attempts, too often successful, to bribe referees of European games. The present Inter may be less successful, but it does seem a far cleaner club.
The vivid image remains in the mind of Liverpool's rugged Tommy Smith, at the San Siro in 1965, kicking the appalling but uncomplaining Spanish referee, Ortiz de Mendibil, off the field after he had cheated Liverpool out of the second leg of their European Cup semi-final.
But if we need not expect such displeasing surprises on Wednesday, what can we expect from Inter? Baggio hopes the match at Old Trafford will be the turning point of a disappointing season in which Inter are too far behind to have a hope of the championship, not so say a place in the next European Cup.
As Maldini said, however, these European Cup matches are something else: "Special, with different conditions. Knowing that millions of people are watching you creates a great stimulus in the players." Up at the Pinetina, Gianluca Pagliuca, Inter's resilient international goalkeeper, sent in alone to face the wolves of the Italian football press, said: "Inter always do well in knock-out games. If Manchester United want to beat us, they will have to sweat."
Pagliuca, whose name in Milan is being associated with Manchester United as a possible successor to Peter Schmeichel, brushed off the dressing-room strife. Just private things, he said, players confronting each other as they sometimes do. Indeed, as married couples sometimes did. They'd have a row then, when it was over, they would be more loving than ever.
Perhaps. It was noted that when Lucescu arrived at the Pinetina that day, having been with Maldini and others to present the prizes to the winning five-a-side team at the San Vittore prison, he and West exchanged hard stares. West was sitting in the car of his agent, Michel Basilevich.
Baggio laments the fact that Ronaldo has tended to come back before he is fully fit, therefore giving less than his best, and Baggio should know. His career has been punctuated by serious injuries. Could Baggio be the decisive factor at Old Trafford? Maldini, who kept dropping him in France in favour of the less effective Alessandro Del Piero, preferred to stress the overall big-match effect. It's fair to say that Inter's hopes rest largely on Baggio's shoulders.
In the Stadio Olimpico last Sunday, Baggio, like his team, was little in evidence in the first half. As Lucescu admitted, Inter's cautious tactics, their largely unfulfilled hope of breakaways, were not working, so they threw caution to the winds in the second half. Twice, a now inspired Baggio came close to equalising. Critics wondered why Lucescu had been so careful in the first half, and so slow to bring on attacking players in the second. Yet if Inter did make more of a game of it in the second half, they were ominously open then in defence and as Sven Goran Eriksson, the Lazio manager, claimed, on chances created Lazio deserved their victory.
It seems unlikely that Inter, at Old Trafford, will risk more than two players upfield, and they may sacrifice the clever Frenchman, Youri Djorkaeff. The combative Dutchman, Aron Winter, is more likely to be used in the midfield.
Baggio's partner, as in Rome, will almost certainly be the big Chilean striker Ivan Zamorano, who never stops working and competing, and was twice unlucky, first when he was booked for allegedly diving, then when he was fouled on the edge of the box by Alessandro Nesta, with no recompense. The trouble is that Zamorano, for all his power in the air and skill on the ground, is not scoring goals.
Inter's home record on the whole has been good, but on the road it is a different story. Another indication that United should win at Old Trafford but, as Maldini said: "After that match, the tie will only be halfway through.
"I saw United's game against Arsenal on TV. They made a lot of mistakes, they even missed a penalty, but they're a dangerous team, with players of great class. Very dangerous up front with Yorke, Giggs, Beckham." Giggs is the player Inter, their fans, and the Milanese journalists fear most.
It seems unlikely that Inter will take many risks at Old Trafford, even though they will probably find more space there than they will get in the return at San Siro. A game, then, when they'll be thinking particularly about the return; and wondering whether it will also see the return of a truly fit Ronaldo.
