Derbies are for the annals – the true fan remembers everything, even the shameful moments. At the end, when the turmoil over the rainy San Siro had died down and Inter Milan had shown everyone the champions, perhaps even literally, Stefano Pioli, the coach of the defeated AC Milan, stood in front of the television cameras and said the following sentence: “We are wrong This game approached? No, in the first four minutes we the ball.” He shouldn’t apologize to the fans either, there is no reason for that: “Inter were simply smarter than us.” Più furbi. Well, if only it had been a question of cleverness.
5:1. Inter were superior in everything, on every inch of the pitch. The two teams had gone into the duel with equal points, and Milan had even been considered equal. But then Marcus Thuram, who came from Mönchengladbach on a free transfer in the summer, showed that the Nerazzurri don’t need to mourn Romelu Lukaku’s disloyalty. Thuram took over the stadium with a power that had rarely been seen in a Milan derby debut.
“I heard a loud noise, a beautiful one,” he said after his spectacularly beautiful goal, a powerful shot into the far, high corner of the goal to make it 2-0 in the 38th minute. Everything was there: technology, power, hunger, something for the albums. Whenever the ball came to the French international, he was already one thought – and two steps – ahead of his pitiful opponent, the German Malick Thiaw.
Mkhitaryan speaks Italian so well and without an accent, as if he had been living in Italy forever
Inter’s dominance was even more impressive in the midfield, probably one of the best in Europe. It was once again about Henrikh Mkhitaryan. Coach Simone Inzaghi never voluntarily gives up on him, even when there are luxury reserves on the bench that half the country wants to see play. The Armenian is now 34 years old, an intellectual of football: he thinks about the game, runs more than everyone else, crosses the opponent’s lines, leaves his mark on his own attack, and you often suddenly find him at the front. Two goals, one assist. In Milan Corriere della Sera It gave it a rating of 9 out of 10.
Mkhitaryan now speaks Italian so well and without an accent that you would think he has been living in Italy forever, a joy in every interview. “We want that second star,” he said after the game. A second star above the club crest on the jersey chest – that would represent twenty championships won. Inter and Milan are both at 19, one star. There’s a duel within a duel going on.
Inter have now won their fifth derby in a row this calendar year, which is also a record. And Inzaghi, who they wanted to send away less than six months ago, is maturing into a memorable coaching figure. His rhetoric still cannot keep up with the acrobatics of his goal celebrations, with his storming runs with his hair blowing, his narrow tie in the wind. Even when the criticism of him was excessive, he always remained calm, he parried everything and, even more astonishingly, when he led Inter to the final of the Champions League last year, he had no desire for revenge. If he was bitter about the unfair attacks, he hid it well. He recently extended his contract.
In none of the derbies this year has Inter appeared more dominant than in this most recent one, of course: also smarter, as Pioli says. In any case, Inter always scored the goals in the 5-1 win when Milan believed in themselves a little. But is scoring goals at the right moment no longer a virtue in football?