For the first after the World Cup visit to the country of world champions, you are preparing as a pilgrimage. Imagination draws phantasmagoric paintings: for example, painted in a sky in honor of the “Adzurra squadron” of a building or, at worst, the fuselage of an Alitalia aircraft. Of course, there is nothing of the kind, and the Italians did not become more football than they were last spring.
By the way, they are not so much in their mass and tiffozi, if you look closely. They run their ants through the fashionable city, which has preserved a medieval charm, chatting in a cafe about clothes and business, and for football conversations there are “cafe reservations” hidden from the eyes of tourist routes on the outskirts. Elderly fans of Inter or Milan will hide in the shadow and silence of their little world and wash the bones of Moratti da Mancini, Ancelotti da Gilardino. Dynamo Moscow is full of such mastodon fans, God forgive me ... I’ll probably argue with some kind of motivation, but imagine a pilgrim who sees at the end of the road not quite what he was waiting for.
However, this is a grumbling of pure water. After all, carabinieri at the border should not juggle balls. And, by the way, when meeting a plane from Moscow, they perfectly understand what kind of landing is taking place in Milan. Not the first time, go! The stamps spank, barely opening their passports, flirting at the sight of red and white paraphernalia: "Calcio, they say, Belissimo" and all that. And in the eyes it reads: thanks for not being drunk to the smack.
Don’t worry, the Signora is still ahead. It’s just a morning flight, and we’re cultural people: in the mornings - no, no, maybe a little better. Here is the bulk of Spartak fans will arrive in the late afternoon, there will be a real belissimo. But they will arrive! Knowledgeable people from our flight said that with a thousand, it’ll be typed. There were three hundred people in Munich, and Milan was more attractive from a general tourist point of view. True, what kind of tourism is there, if on Tuesday evening from the plane in a half-horizontal position — to the hotel, rest in the morning, it’s “free time”, football in the evening, and on Thursday - from the hotel to the plane ...
Spartak is training the day before the match at the San Siro stadium at six in the evening, in our opinion, at eight, that is, at the same time that the printing machines are already invitingly inviting the publishers. And the press conference - after training, and only then - hypothetical mini-interviews. So today you can’t physically write anything about Spartak. And we already know everything about Inter. Adriano and Crespo are injured, Recoba is in a quarrel with a coach, Ibrahimovic was disqualified. Grosso is also, albeit not a striker (although, incidentally, he began his career as a striker). Who will score “Spartak” will be ?!
However, stop: Tuesday “Gadzhet dello Sport” promises Crespo's return to duty for the match against Spartak. And “Corriere della Sera” through the mouth of President Moratti promises an unfortunate two defeat at the start of the Champions League in black and blue tiffozi confident victory. “We need to win four matches. But not forty, right? And we will start on Wednesday with Spartak, ”Moratti warrants.
About "not forty" - the true truth. A similar task (read: to go exactly the distance of the Italian championship) for Inter is akin to utopia.
After Sunday's victory over Catania, Neri Azzurri, however, topped the Serie A standings. This is true even if all points are returned to Milan, which, according to rumors, could very well happen in late autumn. But absolutely no one still believes in the stylistic character of Inter, including, perhaps, personally Moratti, as well as the most faithful of the mastodon old people whispering in the café depths ...
They believe in the Champion Miracle more. Mainly thanks to Spartak, who is not considered an opponent here. The defeat inflicted on the team of Vladimir Fedotov at the start of the group stage in Munich, and the failure to win, as the chess players would say, in the winning position at Sporting confirmed the outsider status of red and white. “Inter” with the same rivals, however, did not score a single point, but this, according to Moratti, is a gain. Down and Out trouble started.
In addition, Inter and Spartak have met twice in the last ten years: once in the UEFA Cup and another time in the Champions League. And in both cases, the Milanese were stronger. Outwardly, their successes looked rather strained, but what, tell me graciously, the modern Inter manage to do with ease?
Here, it would seem, take it and take advantage: it was donated for gaining a winning spirit, and the players from the cracked Juventus were able to intercept, and Milan started with a minus ... But Inter does not look solid, and even more so, no matter how dashing cool. Only if the root "famously" in the word "fever" cram, it will be like the truth. And “Inter” lives on its own principle “not on the forehead, so on the forehead”.
And here the other day the referee Massimo De Santis, caught by the hand in the history of the match-fixing matches, made it clear that the whole dirty story that stirred up Italian football last spring was initiated by Inter. De Santis hinted, in particular, that two years ago, on the orders of Moratti, surveillance had begun on him. Then, they say, De Santis, of course, did not know this, but found out after the fact. If this is confirmed, Moratti will pour out no less a stream of dirt than the one that recently flooded his competitors. This topic, by the way, in the Tuesday “Corrier” was given the main place on the strip dedicated to the affairs of “Inter”. Much more than the staffing problems of Mancini on the eve of the match with Spartak.
Italy still lives with football, although recently it has been doing this in a very peculiar way. In particular, when it comes to Inter, the main attribute of originality becomes complete unpredictability, not to say a mess. Spartak, however, has similar problems. It will be all the more interesting to watch today's match at the San Siro stadium.
Approximate squads (according to Italian sports publications)
Inter: Julio Cesar, Materazzi, Cordoba, Micon, Sanetti, Dakur, Stankovic, Figo, Vieira, Recoba, Cruz
Spartak: Kovalevsky, Shishkin, Strantzl, Geder, Yiranek, Boyarintsev, Kovacs, Mozart, Bystrov, Titov, Pavlyuchenko
ALEXANDER SHMURNOV / MILAN