UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FINAL: Inter's Massimo Moratti brought in Jose Mourinho to claim a trophy that has eluded them for 45 years. Tonight he may well deliever. PADDY AGNEWreports.
LAST SUNDAY night, just minutes after he had lost the Serie A title contest to Inter Milan on the last day of the season, AS Roma coach Claudio Ranieri paid a very sporting tribute to his close rivals. Addressing the Inter owner, petrol millionaire Massimo Moratti, on live TV, Ranieri not only said “well done” but he also wished Inter every success in tonight’s Champions League final against Bayern Munich in Madrid.
All very correct and sporting behaviour from former Chelsea coach Ranieri, a man who is nothing if not a “gentleman”.
Ranieri then went a bit further, saying to Moratti: “Look, I remember the great Inter of the ’60s from my childhood, I can still recite you the team from memory.” And with that he launched into a familiar mantra – Sarti, Burgnich, Facchetti, Bedin, Guarneri, Picchi, Jair, Mazzola, Peiro, Suarez and Corso.
The point about that Inter team, winners of two successive European Cups (against Real Madrid in 1964 and against Benfica in 1965), is their success is indelibly marked on the minds of a whole generation of now-not-so-young Italians.
Inter’s European Cup triumphs, with those of city rivals AC Milan (1963 and 1969), marked an important moment in post-war Italian history, a moment when Italian football registered its first important international successes since the World Cup triumphs of the Fascist ’30s. In a sense, those Milan (both Inter and AC) successes saw Italian football reclaim its place at the top table of world football, whilst they coincided with a 1960s “economic miracle” which saw Italy emerge from the Mussolini-induced suffering, chaos and economic hardship of the second World War.
For a generation of Italian fans, that Inter side could be compared to the Manchester United side which recovered from the 1958 Munich air disaster to win the European Cup final at Wembley 10 years later. Many of us (of a certain age) remember that final against Benfica intimately. Many can still do the Ranieri-style mantra – Stepney, Brennan, Dunne, Crerand, Foulkes, Stiles, Best, Kidd, Charlton, Sadler, Aston. The point about the comparison, however, is that for the Inter fans, the “European” story stops there.
Whilst in the last decade United have reclaimed their proud European heritage, winning two Champions League trophies and losing the final last year, Inter have been out in the cold. Their 1965 triumph was their last in Europe’s number one club tournament. Since then, their best showing was a 1972 final loss to the Cruyff-inspired Ajax Amsterdam.
The 45-year-long Inter wait has been made all the more painful by the fact in the last 20 years their dread city rivals, AC Milan, have won the Champions Cup/League trophy five times. How would Liverpool fans feel if they had not made it to a European Cup final since the Bob Paisley days of the mid-’70s whilst in the meantime Man United were busy winning the trophy every second season? Not good, we suspect.
Needless to say, the AC Milan fans never miss an opportunity to remind their Inter cousins of their comparative European “failures”.
The AC Milan-Inter Milan rivalry, of course, has marked out the entire history of the club. The point is Football Club Internazionale was founded in a Milan restaurant in 1908 by a breakaway group of dissident AC Milan (then called Milan Cricket and Football Club) members led by painter Giorgio Muggiani.
Ironically, it was the question of foreign players which prompted the club split. AC Milan wanted to block the number of foreigners being engaged by the emerging Italian clubs, whilst the dissidents wanted an open market. Hence the name of the new club, “Internazionale”.
These days, too, Inter live up to that particular aspect of their heritage since they may well take to the field tonight with a team that contains not a single Italian player.
Not everyone was happy with Inter’s “international” vocation. In 1928, fascist dictator Benito Mussolini forced the club to change their name to Ambrosiana-Inter. For Il Duce, the FC Internazionale name sounded too much like the Third Communist International and he was having none of that. Inter only re-assumed their original name in 1945 at the end of the second World War.
Whilst the rivalry with AC Milan remains intense, these days the city cousins no longer jeer Inter fans. For five seasons now in this post-Calciopoli (match-fixing scandal) era, Inter have ruled the roost in Italy, collecting their fifth consecutive Serie A title last Sunday. However, the success that Inter, the fans and owner Moratti alike, most crave continues to elude them.
Until tonight, perhaps.
Up at Inter’s training complex of La Pinetina, Appiano Gentile, in the foothills of the Alps, last Tuesday, the sense of anxious expectation was almost tangible. Even by 9am, hundreds of Inter fans had gathered at the gates.
Remember, Appiano Gentile is about 80 kilometres north of Milan, almost on the Swiss border – not exactly just down the road from central Milan.
The T-shirts on sale say much about the current state of Inter “mind”. If “Vamos A Madrid” and “Tutti A Madrid” are hardly original, there is another one which captures the moment – “Inter v Bayern, Champions League Final, Madrid – Call That An Emotion If You Like”.
This is a T-shirt that would have been dear to the heart of Bill Shankly, the great Liverpool coach, who famously once told an insistent female BBC reporter that football was not so much “a matter of life and death” but indeed something “much more serious”.
Needless to say, for the diehard Inter fans, this is the match of a lifetime. With 5,000 final tickets due to be sold by the Banco Popolare di Milano last Saturday, the fans began queuing at 8am on Thursday. For two days and nights, they camped out on the pavement, some in tents, others in deck chairs. Books, newspapers, mini-TVs, crosswords, Sudoku and, above all, barbecues, were brought into action to pass away the long wait.
But then, what are two days, if you have been waiting 45 years? Nor did the club remain indifferent to this show of faith. Moratti dropped by at one point on Friday afternoon, stopping to drink a beer with the fans. The Inter owner is nothing if not a diehard interista. After all, he grew up with a literally "in-house" Inter. He was a wildly enthusiastic 10-year-old when Inter, then owned by his father, Angelo, won in 1965.
Frustrated and fed up with various criticisms, Angelo Moratti sold the club in 1968, after 13 years at the helm. It was only in 1995 the Moratti name was once more linked to the club when son Massimo stepped in to take over a club that was seriously under-performing.
It has been calculated that, since then, Massimo Moratti has spent almost €1 billion to put together teams which, until recently, rewarded him only with disappointments. All of that ended with the coming of, first Roberto Mancini in 2004, and then the Special One, Jose Mourinho, in 2008.
Where such as Roy Hodgson, Marcello Lippi, Marco Tardelli and Hector Cuper had failed, Mancini was able to guarantee at least domestic success. However, so strong was the club craving for European success that even a hat-trick of consecutive league titles could not save Mancini. His successor Mourinho was brought in to deliver the Champions League and tonight he might just do it.
Up at Appiano Gentile, the fans have no doubt “Mou” is the new-found messiah. As your correspondent stood outside the training ground gates last Tuesday morning, I was approached by a couple of not-so-young fans: “Is Mourinho going to stay or will he leave? I hope so much he will stay, he’s the reason I came out here today,” asked the lady, in the clearly mistaken expectation I might have the “inside track” on the weird and wonderful workings of the Special One’s mind.
As Inter march towards their day of destiny, there is little doubt but the Inter faithful are terrified their messiah might be about to pack his bags and head off on another mission impossible, perhaps this time with Real Madrid.
Indeed, you might say the folks up at Inter are almost resigned to the idea.
A victory over Bayern Munich tonight might be the great man’s last flourish before climbing on to his magic broomstick. Then, in years to come, the Inter fans will have a new mantra, something that goes like this – Julio Cesar, Maicon, Lucio, Samuel, Chivu, Zanetti, Cambiasso, Sjneider, Eto’o, Pandev, Milito.
