FOOTBALL – A season which once promised so much for Inter Milan now hangs on Simone Inzaghi’s experienced side beating Paris St Germain in the Champions League final, giving tomorrow’s decider in Munich the feel of a last-chance saloon for the Italian club.
Inter, hurting from a failed league title defence, also seek redemption for the lost final two years ago against Manchester City in Istanbul and, for many of the club’s elder statesmen, this will be seen as their ultimate opportunity.
Inzaghi now has the difficult task of getting his team back on their feet after the players were on their knees only last Friday when the Serie A Scudetto went to Napoli on the final day of the season.
“The championship just concluded left us with something to remember,” Inzaghi told reporters later.
“There is a lot of suffering in myself and in the players, it’s pointless denying it.”
Not so long ago, there was plenty of treble talk around Inter, with the team impressing in Europe, mounting a comeback in Serie A and reaching the semi-finals of the Coppa Italia, until it all began to unravel in a three-game spell in April.
Their bid to repeat the treble feat of Jose Mourinho’s Inter side of 2010 ended with a 3-0 loss to neighbours AC Milan in the second leg of their Cup tie, and league defeats either side of that gave control back to Napoli in the title race.
Despite their domestic failings, Inter can remain optimistic after a European campaign which has been on another level. In the Champions League, they ended the league phase fourth in the standings having conceded just one goal in eight games.
Their strong defence last season, conceding 22 goals in 38 league games, saw Inter easily secure the Serie A title, and they have brought that same spirit into Europe this campaign, at least until the knockout phase.
Inter’s last four Champions League matches brought a lot more goals and no shortage of drama, culminating in a thrilling semi-final tie with Barcelona.
A 7-6 aggregate victory came thanks to defender Francesco Acerbi netting an added-time equaliser and substitute Davide Frattesi coming up trumps with an extra-time winner.
Acerbi is one of the many Inter players still stung by the Champions League final defeat of 2023 and the 37-year-old picked the perfect moment to score his first European goal and keep his side in the competition.
Inter, unlike the youthful PSG, have experience on their side with Yann Sommer, Matteo Darmian, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Stefan de Vrij, Hakan Calhanoglu, Piotr Zielinski, Marko Arnautovic, Mehdi Taremi all on the ‘wrong’ side of 30.
Inzaghi will hope that experience, along with the desire to banish the ghosts of Istanbul and the league campaign just ended, can fuel Inter’s push for the ultimate prize which would put their recent failings well and truly behind them.
Meanwhile, as PSG turned the page on the Kylian Mbappe era, coach Luis Enrique wasted no time in reshaping the identity of a club long built around individual stars and the Spaniard’s method was quick to bear fruit.
Mbappe, who officially left PSG at the end of last season and has joined Real Madrid, had been the undisputed face of the French club since Neymar’s departure and Lionel Messi’s brief spell in Paris.
But under Luis Enrique the French champions have undergone a decisive shift away from a superstar-based model towards a more disciplined, collective-driven footballing philosophy.
The Spaniard, known for his abrasive and uncompromising personality, made his intentions clear early in his tenure.
“Our game does not consist in letting Mbappe do what he wants,” Luis Enrique said last season in a documentary centred around his spell at PSG, when the forward made public his decision to leave as a free agent.
“That was the old philosophy (of the club), which never won a major trophy.”
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