If Roberto Mancini was looking for reason to believe, then he found it at Stadio San Paolo on Monday night, even in defeat. Rarely has a team gained so much in losing this season as Internazionale did at Napoli, as the Serie A weekend came to a close in tumultuous fashion.

As owner Erick Thohir told the club’s official website (see tweet below), this was a moment for Inter to be proud and celebrate progress, rather than to curse a missed opportunity to stay on top of the table—however agonising that might be.

It was that kind of night. There was plenty of anecdotal encouragement, such as knowing that Adem Ljajic became the first player to score against Napoli in Serie A since Fiorentina’s Nikola Kalinic in mid-October. Yet the feelings of achievement for the Nerazzurri went beyond what could be squeezed into statistics, or even past the image of Stevan Jovetic and Miranda each hitting a post with stoppage-time efforts.

Over a third of the way through a season in which Inter have gathered plenty of points but few plaudits for the quality of their football, this was finally the evidence of Mancini’s team having some substance to them. His biggest challenge this season was always going to be creating an identity and a soul for his side. Their refusal to accept defeat, even when Yuto Nagatomo was sent off in the first half, showed that they are a long way towards having both.

This performance was a tribute to the coach’s influence, and a timely one. Much is expected of Mancini, and not just because of the history of his successful first spell at the club. He has been backed generously by Thohir—not once, but twice, since returning to the San Siro in November last year.

The owner had already made a considerable leap of faith in bringing Mancini back, offering the biggest salary of any coach in the division (€4m, as per Gazzetta World) while still paying off his sacked predecessor, Walter Mazzarri. Thohir also found budget for transfer fees and wages from somewhere to help his new man immediately reshape the team, bringing in Lukas Podolski, Xherdan Shaqiri and Marcelo Brozovic in January.

This summer saw the facelift continue, with Jovetic, Miranda, Felipe Melo, Alex Telles, Ljajic and Ivan Perisic all arrive. Yet, the outs that created wriggle room—with Mateo Kovacic sold to Real Madrid and Shaqiri being rapidly moved on to Stoke—underlined the degree of change since Mancini’s first spell at the club. There was no bottomless pit, and there was major surgery required on the team.

Mancini is creating a new image for himself as a coach, for he is being forced to do so. There are always those who insisted he had led a charmed life in terms of the jobs he took and the timing with which he took them. It began with his first post, when he took over the reins at Fiorentina after Fatih Terim’s abrupt departure and picked up a Coppa Italia with the team that the Turkish coach left.

The case exhibits stacked up; Calciopoli cleared the way for Mancini to guide Inter into a dominant position after they were retrospectively awarded the 2006 Scudetto, which had been won by Juventus. Then he was furnished with Manchester City’s millions in order to lead them to the 2012 Premier League title, the club’s first top-flight championship in 43 years.

At Galatasaray—when he again inherited a winning team from Terim—he was unable to maintain a grip on the Super Lig, although Cim Bom won the Turkish Cup. More alarming was his admission when he quit the post in mid-June 2014 (eight-and-a-half months in) that he left because the plentiful resources promised were no longer there. “When I accepted the coaching post, Gala’s aims were different,” he told the Gazzetta dello Sport (as per the Guardian).

Yet, Mancini has already evolved the view that he is only a good-time coach. He came back with his eyes wide open, knowing that he was inheriting little more than a shambles and showing himself grateful for a mere point on his second debut on the Nerazzurri bench, in the derby with a similarly diminished Milan.

“We had great spirit, so it’s a positive night for me,” he said after the game (reported, again, by the Guardian). To build from that to contending for a return to the Champions League, in the face of competition from a superior Roma and a reinforced Milan among others, is arguably more daunting than the prospect of matching up to the silverware haul of that first spell.

Mancini has been brutally realistic and has made some tough calls. One imagines that the vaunted Mauro Icardi was frustrated that he was the one chosen to make way when Telles was introduced at the beginning of the second half, plugging the gap left by Nagatomo’s dismissal at the end of the first period. Yet the decision to leave on Ljajic was completely the right one and almost helped turn the game.

Juventus’ four successive wins, which have taken them to within six points of Inter and only seven shy of Napoli at the top, mean that the current top four have every right to feel a bit twitchy all of a sudden. Yet, Inter can be confident going forward, at least in terms of carving out a spot in the top three, which is their avowed target.

It is easy to forget in rose-tinted hindsight that the football wasn’t always fabulous in Mancini’s all-conquering first reign (although the same could be said for Jose Mourinho’s subsequent, highly successful spell at the helm). That may be the case again, but they have found a personality. That is a huge start in terms of getting to where they want to be, and Mancini must take a huge portion of the credit for it. At last, Inter are a force to be reckoned with again.

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