Inzaghi’s cup champions started the Champions League with a corner kick goal.
Before kickoff, a banner hung on San Siro’s Curva Sud proclaiming that every devil in hell had come to support Milan, except for the one who resides in the details. A stadium can be turned into an inferno for a night. But leaving Edin Dzeko unmarked at a corner is a recipe for enduring regret.
Davide Calabria said of the goal that set Inter on the path to a 2-0 victory over the Rossoneri in the first leg of their Champions League semi-final, “He’s a lot bigger than me, there’s not much I can do.” Dzeko struck a volley eight minutes into the best Milan derby in 20 years.
According to La Gazzetta dello Sport, it was the first time in 104 attempts that Stefano Pioli’s team had conceded from a corner kick, but it felt all too familiar. Three months ago, Inter defeated Milan with a goal from the same source: Hakan Calhanoglu delivered both crosses from the same corner of the same pitch shared by both teams. The only distinction was the scorer: Dzeko compared to Lautaro Martnez.
“Derbies are decided by the smallest of details,” Martnez said on Wednesday.
The same could be said about cup matches. Inter’s record in knockout competitions under Simone Inzaghi is virtually unblemished, having won the Supercoppa in each of the past two seasons, as well as the Coppa Italia in 2022 and the upcoming Coppa Italia final against Fiorentina this month.
Nobody on the team dares to assume that they will also reach the Champions League final. After defeating Milan, players repeatedly told reporters that a 2-0 lead was irrelevant. Francesco Acerbi stated, “I am neither happy nor satisfied because we have not yet accomplished anything.”
We can at least recognize past accomplishments. Inter was not anticipated to advance past the group stage after being paired with Bayern Munich and Barcelona. In October, their 1-0 victory over the Catalan club came after consecutive league losses.
The Nerazzurri have maintained clean sheets in four of their last five knockout matches despite having a free-agent goalkeeper, André Onana, and a Paris Saint-Germain-bound starting center-back, Milan Skriniar, out injured since the middle of the month.
Inzaghi has made numerous errors for Inter. His team was anticipated to contend for the Serie A championship this year, but they are currently fourth with four games remaining, 20 points behind champions Napoli, and in a six-way battle for the remaining Champions League spots.
It is a peculiarity of this semi-final – hailed as a renaissance moment for two of Italy’s most illustrious clubs – that both managers have been the subject of rumors regarding their job security. Milan is fifth, falling behind Inter after last week’s draw with 19th-place Cremonese.
Wednesday night, however, was another occasion in which Inzaghi made all the crucial decisions correctly.
Calhanoglu and Dzeko started ahead of Marcelo Brozovic and Romelu Lukaku. Despite the Belgian’s excellent recent form (three goals and three assists in his last three starts). These judgments were amply rewarded. So was the initial instinct to go for the jugular.
Inter beat Milan 3-0 in the Supercoppa in January after taking a 2-0 lead after 21 minutes. Dzeko scored in the seventh minute and Henrikh Mkhitaryan scored after Martnez dummying Federico Dimarco’s through ball.
Here, they felt even more decisive. Milan was the designated home team, and supporters were committed to making Inter’s experience miserable. By the time Mkhitaryan scored, it was as if the entire stadium had been doused with holy water, the ear-splitting roar that greeted kickoff having been displaced by near silence on the Curva Sud.
Milan rallied, and Junior Messias or Sandro Tonali’s early second-half goals may have stoked the embers. Currently, the Rossoneri have six days to discover a solution to this impasse. The return of Rafael Leo from the quadriceps strain he sustained over the weekend will be closely watched.
In his post-match comments, Pioli dismissed any notion of a disparity between the teams, stating, “Inter played better than us in the first half and scored two goals. We outperformed them in the second, but we did not.”
If minutiae truly determine the outcome of derbies and cup matches, then converting your opportunities must be the most crucial.
Inter had Martnez, Lukaku, and Dzeko, while Pioli has no choices up front after Leo’s injury.
This time, Dzeko proved decisive. The Bosnian earned his first league championship with Wolfsburg in 2008-09 and two more with Manchester City.
His registration states that he is 37 years old, but a journalist asked him to validate his age on Wednesday evening, unable to reconcile that number with the striker’s enduring agility and decisiveness on the pitch. “How old did I say I was last time?” Dzeko fired back. On a night when particulars mattered, this was not the case.
