Inter, towards the night of the Champions dream. Inzaghi: «One step missing, winning for us and all the Nerazzurri people»

Munich - The faces, the countenances, the glances. Those are what count, on the eve of a Champions League Final. Not the words, which reverberate dull and monotonous, an act of extreme courtesy on the part of those who will be the protagonists on the field, who flood with harmless molasses the hours empty of events and full of thoughts that precede the appointment that is worth a lifetime, no, but a career, yes, indeed.

Well, the faces we have seen here in the belly of the Allianz Arena on the Inter side seem to be the right ones. Those of those who are approaching the Holy Grail of European football "not with obsession, but with the right determination"; as underlined by Simone Inzaghi himself. Yes, he, the leader of this four-year period full of many victories and few but painful defeats, including two league titles and the Champions League two seasons ago, left to Manchester City in the night of Istanbul.

Unwritten future - “My future? Now there is only the Champions League final, then we will talk about it with the club”, he immediately makes it clear, making it clear that not everything can be taken for granted in order to plan a possible future still arm in arm. Let it be clear: the Nerazzurri people would sign a farewell to Mourinho, with the coach leaving for other shores and the Cup remaining in the trophy cabinet. In short, “The Champions League is well worth an Inzaghi”, even if the coach must be burdened by the fact that a good part of these four years will still be read under the sole light of the result that will mature on the perfectly mowed lawn of the cathedral of Bavarian football.

We are Inter – “how is this final different from the one in Istanbul? We have made the most of the experience gained and the days that separated us from the bitter end of the championship to this match. We have taken care of and worked on the details, and we have done the best we could, all of us, I am sure of it”, Inzaghi underlines again. The rest – not a little, in fact, in truth – is said by Lautaro Martinez and Nicolò Barella. Central concept? The “We” every time we talk about the team, club, technical staff, Nerazzurri people. They trace the Cartesian axes of a family that extends in football space-time, Martinez and Barella, and that will all find space in Munich, represented by the eleven on the pitch, by the 18 thousand in the stands, by the 20 thousand in the city hunting for a ticket, by the 70 thousand who will gather at San Siro and by all those scattered around the world but linked via the airwaves to a single Nerazzurri faith. “The key to the match? We are the best in Europe for ball possession, we will try to take away their dribbling, then,” Inzaghi declares again. The same words pronounced on the eve of the challenges with Barcelona. Translated: not defense and counterattack, but reasoned pressing to create those spaces in which to launch the various troublemakers inspired by the advanced direction of Lautaro himself. We will see if (this time too) it will work.

Beautiful and possible – This is how Luis Enrique designed his Paris Saint Germain, without the super figurines of the recent past (A few names? Neymar, Messi, Mbappé….) but in the name of technical cleanliness and boldness. In short, a Barcelona-like team that does not give up the defensive phase, organized around the former Roma player Marquinhos, a prestigious migrant from our Serie A like Donnarumma, the former Nerazzurri player Hakimi, the former Neapolitans Fabian Ruiz and Kvaratskhelia, the man of the two scudetti in just one year, having won half of Napoli's and the other half of PSG's (which – by the way – is chasing his very own seasonal Treble).