‘I’d say, if anything, Milan fans dislike Inter more than they dislike us,’ admits Max, a rossoneri season ticket-holder. ‘We have to share “our” stadium with them, and we’ve won more than they have. The Milan curva sud sings songs against Inter at every game, not only when we are playing against them.’ The chant ‘July and August’ ridicules Interisti pre-season boasting which often comes to nothing by season’s end. Given Inter’s lack of a scudetto since 1989, it hits home. ‘But they seem more bothered about beating Juve,’ says Max. ‘At least that’s what they pretend.’
‘It is true. For Inter the derby is a very important game. But historically, it’s against Juventus that feelings ran highest,’ says no less an authority than Mario Corso, legendary left-winger of the ‘Grande Inter’ side that swept all before them in the early-’60s. Under coach Helenio Herrera, regarded as the inventor of the notorious catenaccio defensive style, Inter won four scudetti, two European Cups, and two Intercontinental Cups.
Corso, who notched up 414 league appearances for Inter, recalls: ‘In ’65 we won 2–0 and overtook Milan to win the league. And I scored. That is a special memory. But against Juve there was an angry feeling, it always felt worse being beaten by Juve. It was almost a derby.’ Indeed the Juventus–Internazionale fixture is classically known as il derby d’Italia, being the only ever-present Serie A fixture and because of the Inter and Juventus supporters clubs spread around the country.
But across town at the Milan club headquarters in Via Turati, Cesare Maldini, whose captaincy included lifting the European Cup at Wembley after defeating Benfica 2–1 in 1963, dismisses any suggestion that Milan’s city derby is anything less than a charged-up affair. ‘No, no, the players really felt it,’ recalls the ex-rossoneri leader, and father of current captain Paolo. ‘The derby was always the most important game – it meant being supreme, for the fans to say they were the top team in the city, for a few months. When Milan won 6–0 a couple of years ago, and at “their place” too,’ he chuckles, ‘it was a terrific shock. It really meant something.’ From his own playing days he can’t pick out one particular derby game, ‘but in those days the winning fans would go out celebrating in the streets, and carry mock funeral wreaths to the other club. Admittedly, you don’t see that any more.’
The lack of animosity between the clubs increasingly extends to the transfer of players. Last season saw Dutch midfielder Clarence Seedorf, Croatian defender Dario Simic and much talked about trequartista (playmaker) Andrea Pirlo switch to Milan, following midfielder Cristiano Brocchi the season before. ‘I could never have changed from nerazzurri to Milan, no never,’ affirms the 61-year-old Corso. ‘I had the opportunity,’ reveals Maldini, ‘back before Paolo was born. Moratti (Angelo, father of current Inter president, Massimo) wanted me but it didn’t come off. In those days it was almost unthinkable to change colours. The players had certain bars and places we went to. Really, it was unthinkable.’
But Alberto Costa, Milan correspondent at the Corriere della Sera, insists switching shirts is not solely a modern phenomenon. ‘There are precedents. When Milan were relegated to Serie B in 1982 they were in a very bad way financially. Inter helped them out by lending them three players, Aldo Serena, Canuti, and Pasinato. They came straight back up into Serie A.’
A modern echo of that camaraderie came last November. Inter’s Christian Vieri sent a congratulatory text message to Andriy Shevchenko when the back-from-injury Milan striker scored the vital Champions League winner against Real Madrid. A week later the gesture was reciprocated when ‘Bobo’ Vieri himself ended a goal drought by blasting all four against Brescia.
The Corriere della Sera man sums up the relations between the Milan giants: ‘On the pitch, between the players, there is great rivalry. But it’s very, let’s say, very “English”: it’s hard competition between professionals, it means a lot, but it’s all done with fair play.’ He makes a telling point: ‘When they changed the name of the San Siro it wasn’t by accident that they re-named it the Giuseppe Meazza stadium.’ Meazza was an Inter hero whose career spanned twenty years until 1947, scoring 283 goals in 408 matches. ‘But he actually played the last two seasons of his career with the rossoneri’, says Costa. ‘He represents both clubs.’ The new San Siro museum has memorabilia and trophies of both teams exhibited together.
The derby may well serve to emphasise the original closeness of the Milanese clubs, but it also points up the peculiar differences in club ‘culture’. The old delineation of working class reds and aristocratic blues may be long gone. But Inter still hang on to that old patina of prestige, the first of the two to win the yellow star. Nowadays, however, without a title win since 1989, it is an illustrious history that weighs ever heavier. ‘Two different realities,’ is how the two institutions are summed up by Federica Zangalli, whose role as football reporter for TeleLombardia, the leading regional TV station, gives her a unique insight. ‘As a club Inter are still very much run like a family firm, dominated by Massimo Moratti. He is a fan, he loves the club. The criticism is that he loves it too much. There is no “wall” dividing the owner from the management who run the club, the team. If he sees a player he likes, he buys him.’ This is why only Inter could have tolerated for so long the Ronaldo saga. Juventus, for example would have cut their losses and offloaded the troublesome star much sooner, as they did with Zidane. ‘Moratti is a lovely man, a romantic, which football needs. But perhaps he is too nice a person for this modern business of football.’
‘The arrival of Berlusconi in 1986 revolutionised Milan. They are now run like a multi-national company. Unlike Inter everyone knows their specific role and little things don’t blow up into great big problems.’ The enormous Berlusconi-era successes – six Serie A titles, three European Cups, three European Super Cups, and two Intercontinental cups – reversed the imbalance in silverware with their neighbours. The rossoneri now have sixteen scudetto to Inter’s thirteen.
‘Whereas at Milan there’s an upbeat approach, at Inter there is this culture of suffering,’ observes Zangalli. ‘It is almost as though it’s in their DNA to suffer. The more they miss out on winning something, the more anxious they become, the fans, the club, so the more pressure there is to win something. It’s a classic vicious circle.’
But former player Corso denies Inter’s is a culture of pessimism. ‘There is a lot of irony, very self-deprecating. It’s always been like that.’ It is perhaps no coincidence that many comics and literary figures are numbered among Inter’s celebrity fans. Away from the ultra-dominated curva, Inter supporters in the costlier seats are notoriously the most impatient in Serie A. ‘Yes, it’s true, they are very negative,’ says Fabio Monti, Il Corriere’s Inter-watcher. ‘If at half-time they are not winning they start to whistle against their own players every time they make a mistake.’ Zangalli agrees: ‘That, of course, makes the players more nervous still. Several players have moved from Inter to Milan in recent seasons, and they all notice the difference arriving at AC.’ Is it just that success breeds success so the Milanisti are more relaxed and patient? ‘No, Inter fans have always been like that,’ bemoans Monti. ‘Even before this barren period they were always more negative, more critical of their side. Perhaps it comes from having such great expectations because of their history, it’s difficult to say,’ he admits with an exasperated shake of the head.
Milan and Inter, the odd couple indeed. If AC are now the laid-back slightly devilish Walter Matthau, then Inter are the neurotic Jack Lemmon, trying too hard and beset by self-doubt. Simplistically speaking, AC Milan’s game classically is founded on a patient passing approach, dubbed by detractors as gioco orrizontale – the square ball. Inter’s is traditionally built around one outstanding world-beater – Sandro Mazzola in the 1960s, Ronaldo in the late-1990s, Vieri now – exploiting the gioco verticale, the direct long ball. Peppino Prisco, the rascally former Inter vice president, once defended the team’s style by referring to the famous 1949 derby victory: ‘square ball five, long ball six.’
Milan sold more than 53,000 season tickets for this current season.