Inter Milan have good chances in the second leg of the quarter-finals against Benfica in the Champions League. However, a serious form crisis in Serie A weighs on the Italians.
Inter Milan are twice this season. Once in the Serie A version. It’s unsightly, hasn’t won in five weeks and was embarrassed at home with a 0-1 draw against promoted Monza at the weekend. But then there is Inter in the Champions League. The Milanese deliver great moments there, beat Barcelona in the preliminary round, knocked Porto out of the competition and also impressed in the 2-0 first leg win in the quarter-finals against Benfica Lisbon. Inter Milan, the beauty of the night.
Pale in the league
In everyday league life it looks different. Few reminders of the team that fought for the title to the last day last season and were champions the year before. Inter, who have seldom stood for beautiful football, but always for effective football, currently seem like a parody of themselves in Serie A. And provide statistics that are difficult to understand. In their last five league games, Simone Inzaghi’s side have had 113 shots on target – scoring just two. One of them by penalty. Inter’s current record, with one point from the past five games, is that of a relegated team. The 19-time champion, who was Napoli’s closest pursuer at the beginning of the year, has now fallen to fifth place and is trembling about qualifying for the Champions League again.
Difficult to understand, but somehow also inter-typical. The “Nerazzurri” are notorious for losing what they thought was certain and winning what they thought they had lost like no other team in Italy. The supporters proudly call their team “Pazza Inter”, crazy Inter. The request thundering from tens of thousands of throats in the refrain of the old stadium anthem “Amala, pazza Inter, amala!” (Love it crazy Inter, love it!) caused the San Siro concrete to vibrate for years before the game started.
Low against Monza, Inzaghi wobbles
This weekend, however, the suffering Inter fans ran out of patience. They had endured the disastrous performances in Serie A with defeats against relegation candidate La Spezia for weeks with their legendary patience. But now, after the defeat against newcomer Monza, the small club on the outskirts of Milan, it was over. The team was chased into the dressing room with whistles and insults. At the moment, hardly anyone was interested in the fact that Inter had a chance to make it into the Champions League semi-finals this week. The club management around CEO Giuseppe Marotta then sat with coach Inzaghi for a long time. The result according to “Corriere dello Sport” is not surprising: only if Inter progress against Benfica on Wednesday will Inzaghi still be a coach in Milan next week.
The affable 47-year-old was considered one of Italy’s great hopes to coach after his time at Lazio. At Inter they were quite happy with Inzaghi for a year and a half. Although they narrowly missed out on defending their title, the former Serie A striker and three-time cap lived up to his reputation as the “Re delle Coppe”, the king of the cups. With Inter, Inzaghi, honored by “Moda Donna” because of his style of clothing as “Italy’s coolest coach”, still won the Italian Cup competition and the Supercup twice. Simone clearly wins in the family duel with his better-known older brother Filippo “Pippo” Inzaghi, who became world champion and Champions League winner with AC Milan as a player, but now commutes between Serie A and Serie B as a coach.
Inter Mailands Trainer Simone Inzaghi
Simone Inzaghi’s current problem: He has found no explanation and even less a solution for what the “Gazzetta dello Sport” calls his team’s “bipolar disorder”. When Inzaghi assured in the press conference before the game against Monza that his players went into the Serie A games just as motivated as they did in the Champions League matches, the reactions ranged from smiles to shakes of the head. The fact is that Inter is often agitated in everyday league life and only delivers on the Champions League holidays, albeit with a bit of luck, as was the case recently against Porto and Benfica. Against Monza, however, some Inter players looked tense, as if the Serie A curse had taken hold of their heads. However, the club is financially dependent on qualifying for the Champions League again.
Lukaku symbolic of Inter’s inconsistency
Romelu Lukaku is a symbol of Milan’s fluctuating performances between Europe and the domestic league. The Belgian was in 2021 after Inter’s championship for 113 million euros Chelsea FC changed, a record sum for the Italians. In London, however, the sensitive striker was not happy, coach Thomas Tuchel rarely relied on him. Lukaku made a rueful return to Milan on loan in the summer and has since received the love he had hoped for from the fans and community at Inter. Despite modest performances, the Inter supporters celebrated him with encouraging chants and banners until the weekend.
On the pitch, Lukaku is a far cry from his championship season form when he was Inter’s top scorer with 24 goals. Since his return, the quick, beefy striker has only scored three goals in Serie A, also due to injury problems, two of them from penalties. Lukaku scored the last goal from the game at the start of the season in August, eight months ago. In the last five league games, Lukaku has had a large part in Inter’s 111 unsuccessful shots on goal. The way the 29-year-old headed the ball against Salernitana from a distance of two meters not into the goal but against the crossbar was physically so unbelievable that the scene was shown umpteen times on Italian television. But the same applies to Lukaku: a lot is different in the Champions League. The man with the number 90 scored the decisive goal in the landmark games against Barcelona and Porto, a week ago at Benfica Lukaku converted a nerve-racking penalty in the final stages to make it 2-0.
Calhanoglu and Mkhitarian bring hope
Few players are consistently performing at Inter these days, regardless of Serie A or Champions League. Two of them are old acquaintances from the Bundesliga. First and foremost Hakan Calhanoglu, Inter’s strongest player this season. The former player for Karlsruher SC, Hamburger SV and Bayer Leverkusen has become a defining personality in his second year in black and blue. Calhanoglu’s leap in quality is also due to a change of position. Inzaghi has ordered the Mannheim-born Turkish national player from left offensive to defensive midfield. There Calhanoglu impressed with his well-known strong technique with charisma and impressive understanding of the game, which was rarely visible in his earlier offensive position.
One of the few consistent players at Inter: Henrich Mchitarjan
One of the stabilizers on the shaky Inter ship is also Henrich Mkhitaryan. The former Dortmunder is already 34 years old, but still impresses with his technique, speed, willingness to run and the ability to make the right decision even in the tightest of spaces. Despite Mkhitaryan’s advanced footballing age, Inter did everything they could to lure the Armenian from AS Roma to Milan last summer.
Robin Gosens, on the other hand, hasn’t really arrived at Inter yet. After a long injury break, the 14-time German national player wanted to get going this season. The place on the left flank was secured by the native of Milan and former Inter youth player Federico Dimarco. Gosens, right here in the Inter trend, delivered his strongest performances in the Champions League. The 14-time German national player also showed good approaches in the league, but was unlucky that Inter slipped into the crisis at exactly the same time as Gosens was getting closer to his old form.
Now, in the Champions League quarter-finals, Inter are favorites at home against Benfica after winning 2-0 in the first leg. Monza out, La Spezia out. Serie A is Serie A and Champions League is Champions League. In the semifinals, there would be an Italian duel with local rivals AC Milan. Whoever wins that is already in the final. And then, with the point balance of a relegated team in the domestic league, climb the European football throne? It would be “da pazza Inter” – a “crazy Inter” type thing.
