Yeah, on the other hand, I can understand what Adriano was going through but these things are really difficult for outsiders to help.
At the end of the day, Adriano needed to get out of it himself, and clearly he never managed to.
But that was kind of off topic. After the departure of Veron, we never looked the same with our midfield, there was no midfield general dictating the tempo and the directionality of play whilst in possession.
There was Figo, but he didn't do the same job even after being moved to trequartista. There was also Pizarro, but we didn't even play him as a regista, we played him as a trequartista/cm in a flat midfield, lots of regret over there as well.
I also never considered Stankovic nor Cambiasso being the same style of players, so that's that.
But the creativity decline / the ability with playing with the ball has gone downhill from that point IMO, or even slightly earlier WHEN Veron was here but Mancini somehow decided he was a right wing rather than a central player.