Inter remembers Mourinho and will play the Champions League final 13 years later

The ‘Nerazzurri’ team, which has not played in the final of the European Cup since the treble in 2010, gets rid of a Milan already liquidated in the first leg and finished off at the Giuseppe Meazza by Lautaro (1-0)

How to understand football. Inter should not be a team that intimidates in this Champions League. Framed in the league with Bayern and Barcelona, ​​nobody seemed to notice the nerazzurri, with much more history than present to claim. But, after surviving that first trap and thanking some most appetizing crosses (Porto, Benfica, and finally their city enemy, Milan), Inter, third in Serie A, 17 points behind champions Naples, has reached the European last step. And you will be able to remember the next June 10 in the final in Istanbul, against the winner of Manchester City-Real Madrid, that time when Jose Mourinho He won the third and last European Cup for the club in 2010.

It does not seem easy to make comparisons with those interista squads that made history in European football. In 1964, Helenio Herrera on the bench and sandro mazola and Luis Surez in the field they knocked down Real Madrid Di Stefano, crowd and puskas in the Vienna final. A year later, HH got rid of another legendary team, Benfica de eusebio, in a final played under the shelter of Giuseppe Meazza. While in 2010, when Inter reigned in Europe for the last time after beating Bayern de Van Gaal in the Bernabu, the stars could be enumerated: from the eternal captain Zanettigoing through a Samuel Eto’o that came from acting as a winger on the wall planted in the semifinals against Bara de guardiola at the Camp Nou, a striker who had plenty of trade in the area (Diego Milito), but above all a coach, Mourinho, who turned every game into a mission for believers only. And that he acquired the category of messianic leader for the fans of Inter.

The Inter of these times has little to do with it. without the family Moratti in the box, ruled by the heir of a holding company Chinese (Steven Zhang), and with the Argentine Lautaro Martinez As a great offensive reference and also captain, he also has in his coach, Simone Inzaghi, someone more than prepared to squeeze each of the episodes that determine football. He did it in the first leg of the Derby della Madonnina, when he gambled everything on a wild start to thwart Milan with two goals in ten minutes at the San Siro. And he did it in his return, already as a local in the pagan temple of Lombarda, when he knew how to contain some rossoneri to those who found it of little use to recover Raphael Leo for the cause.

Brahim’s chance

They say that Italian football is coming back. They have amassed teams in recent European rounds. But then one notices that the dorsal ten of Milan, seven times European champion, is Brahim Diaz. A more than correct midfielder, without a doubt. But exempt from that aura that distinguishes earthly players from those who are not. Brahim, after ten minutes, found himself with the ball in front of him, a few centimeters beyond the penalty spot. and the goalkeeper OnanaPrepared for a point-blank shot, he simply held his position and waited for the ball to reach him. Milan, perhaps at that moment, already understood that there would be no way to lift the tie. Even more so after seeing how Leao, the first time he intervened, turned around so slowly that time seemed to stop around him.

The Portuguese winger, undoubtedly the only footballer in the group of pioli with the ability to rebuild scripts, he tried once more. The umpire did not see the ball hit his hand. little matter left behind dimarco with enormous ease and on land acerbi with a cutout made with child’s scissors. He failed, however, at the culmination, with a shot too crossed.

Inter, who did not need to arrive with too much danger in the vicinity of maignanHe settled down to wait calmly. Barella He did not have too many problems to eat the morale of Krunic and tonaliresponsible for a non-existent creativity in the absence due to injury of benacer. And the minutes could have been falling like flagstones waiting for a revolution from Milan that never came.

Lautaro, invisible in the Argentine success in the World Cup in Qatar, but who found in that contradictory experience a good reason to believe in him again, climbed the Meazza fences. Then to an advertisement. And everything seemed little after coloring the previous confusion in the area between Gosen and lukakurecently entered the field, and nail a left-footed shot into the net that Maignan did not even know how to foresee, beaten by the short stick.

Lautaro raised the fist of an Inter that, at this point, no one is afraid of.