Inter rises from Italy's soccer wasteland History and scandal undercut the
joy
*Rob Hughes <http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?query=Rob
Hughes&sort=publicationdate&submit=Search>*
Published: March 4, 2007



Internazionale Milan is a club in mourning and exaltation at the same time.

The team cannot stop winning but the legends of its past are dying. Last
September, Inter buried its former president, the incomparable left back
Giancinto Faccehtti. On Saturday, just as the team prepared for its 22nd
victory from 26 contests in Serie A — this time in the Tuscan port of
Livorno — news came that Benito (Veleno) Lorenzi had died.

Lorenzi, 81, was not snatched away in comparative youth as was Faccehtti.
Yet fathers have passed down to sons, and to grandsons, the tales of this
tall, lean, quick son of a grocer, from Tuscany, who scored 143 goals in 314
games for Inter.

Veleno, literally "poison," was the sobriquet by which the Milanese,
followers of Inter's rival AC Milan, knew Lorenzi. The clubs meet again at
San Siro next Sunday for a derby that for once has Inter far, far beyond the
reach of its neighbor.

Milan's rivalry is not what it was. Barely a year ago, Massimo Moratti, the
owner of Inter, was talking of giving up the quest to emulate the glory that
his late father Angelo, an oil magnate, presided over in the late 1960s.
Massimo Moratti had spent $400 million on transfer fees, had turned over
nine coaches in a dozen years, and had still failed to win the Scudetto,
Italy's domestic title, let alone land the European Cup.

"Unfortunately, the team has faded in the face of the big challenges," he
said in April. "If there is someone who can do better than I, and has the
desire to commit themselves, it is right that I should contemplate selling
the club." Two months after that, despair turned to a tainted kind of
fulfillment when the courts handed Inter the Serie A championship. Juventus
and AC Milan had finished with more points, but the infamous "Calciopoli,"
the scandal involving procurement of referees, had demoted Juventus to Serie
B and stripped Milan of points and status.

Moratti and his once-threatened coach, Roberto Mancini, could claim that
their boys were genuine champions because the others had cheated, but in
truth the 2006 Scudetto was something untouchable, something utterly
discredited in most people's minds.

This season? For a start, Inter would have to win the title by a minimum of
eight points over AC Milan to be given the credit it deserves. Eight points
remains a hang-over penalty — a lenient one many fans believe — docked from
Silvio Berlusconi's Milan team.

Right now, even with Ronaldo back from Madrid to lift Milan's attack, the
points difference between the two clubs stands at 30 after Milan could only
draw, 0-0, at Palermo on Saturday. Indeed, Inter, unbeaten all season long,
scoring more goals than the rest and conceding fewer, is 16 points clear of
every other team.

Barring collapse — or in Italy, one has to say, barring judicial
intervention — the Scudetto is in the bag. The Champions League, delicately
poised after Inter was held 2-2 at home two weeks ago by Valencia, is the
big challenge.

Inter's squad is surely the deepest assembled in Italy for some time. It is
laced with big players purchased from Juventus when the Turin giant fell
into the second division last summer. Mancini, a candidate for the ax a year
ago, is a coach with two or more options for every position on the field.

The talk of José Mourinho, the Chelsea coach, or anyone else taking
Mancini's role is, for now, history. Yet Mancini, once himself a goal scorer
and, at just 42, with plenty to learn concerning man management, is still so
tense, so volatile, that he could be banished from the touchline for next
Sunday's San Siro derby.

Mancini was sent off for the vehemence of his protest at Livorno when one of
his players, the Brazilian Maicon, was sent off late in the game. The points
by then were already won, goals by Julio Cruz and Zlatan Ibrahimovic
overhauling the early strike for Livorno from Cristiano Lucarelli.

You might think the pressure was off the coach, and his thoughts might have
turned to which strikers he will start with in Valencia on Tuesday. He has
Adriano, Hernán Crespo, Santiago Solari, Alvaro Recoba as well as Saturday's
scorers on the payroll — and that is just the options up front.

Ibrahimovic, a Swede, and Crespo, an Argentine, are probably top of the
pecking order. "We're going to Valencia to win," says Ibrahimovic. "We're
strong and playing with confidence. Everything is in our hands."

It is what is in the head and the feet of Ibrahimovic that counts. He stands
1.92 meters or just under 6-foot-4, and represents an aerial threat, but his
multinational colleagues at Inter are now discovering the deftness he has on
the ground.

In some ways, Ibrahimovic represents the new Inter. Born in an immigrant
population in Malmo, the son of a Bosnian Muslim father and a Croatian
catholic mother, he arrived in Milan via Ajax Amsterdam and Juventus.

He is a modern mercenary in a club stocked with every conceivable cultural
mix. His movement is served by Dejan Stankovic, a Serbian play maker, and
coached by Sinisa Mihajlov, another Serb who assists Mancini.

Ibrahimovic has emerged as a key player. On Saturday, he made one goal and
scored the second — and just 5,800 spectators saw. That, following the
killing of a Sicilian police inspector during the Catania-Palermo match last
month, is the consequence of tougher safety restrictions imposed by the
Italian government.

Even at a time when Inter's record- breaking run of 17 consecutive league
victories, which ended a week earlier, has established the club's right to
be compared to its past, there is something taken away from the joy. The
contemporaries of Benito Lorenzi, whose black and white photo dominated the
club's Web site over the weekend, will go on thinking they had the best of
it.


--
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Ciao... CENTENARY... 9 March 2008!!!


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