The week of the derby started like this. Gazzetta dello sport on Tuesday 14 April, title: "Ten reasons to watch Inter-Milan". Let's take a look. Reason number one, writes the journalist: the subway. I can not believe it. The most important reason to go to San Siro is that you get there with the new metro line. Doesn't that sound crazy to you? Sure, it's insane, but it's even worse, because the subway, the famous lilac, doesn't exist yet, it will be inaugurated (apparently) on April 29th and so we'll have to go with the usual bus, or on foot, by bike or by motorbike.
Wednesday 15th. Galliani cheers up the AC Milan fans. "Inzaghi will remain on the Milan bench again next year". So, one wonders: but is Isis, understood as the Caliphate, really that disgusting? And one imagines the scene: Galliani kneeling on the sand, in the orange overalls, and you there, dressed in black, reciting the sentence. And the cell phone rings, it's his friends: “Come on, Guido, even if you speak Arabic and you have a hood on your head, we recognized you. Forget it, it's true, Galliani does one bullshit after another, but after all he's a Rossoneri fan, and then it's just a game…”.
Because the derby can be won, lost or drawn, but one thing is certain. In the end Pippo will go in front of the cameras and always say the same thing, that is "I'm satisfied with the game the boys played". Always the same thing. He doesn't quibble about the result, because if he quibbles it would mean that he understands something about the game, but he doesn't and he never has. Years ago, when he was a celebrated centre-forward, a commentator on football things said: "Inzaghi doesn't play ball, he plays goals". In the sense that he positioned himself on the line of defenders, and sought in the short sprint, in the rebound, in the carom, in his extraordinary nose for being in the right place at the right time, the meaning of his presence on the pitch: the goal. The rest, schemes, openings, returns, doubles, or everything he has to do with the game of football, was absolutely foreign to him.
His Milan is the projection of this idea. Seven-eight passes to laboriously pass the midfield, then someone ventures a vertical throw for Menez and if the "false nueve" is in the day or the marking is loose, something happens. Otherwise the ball goes to the opponents, all back, he waves from the bench and so on in the astonished silence of the increasingly scarce Rossoneri fans on the bleachers.
In this nightmarish season, only one small, miserable reason for satisfaction remains: we are always ahead of the Indonesians. By just one point, all right, but still ahead. And if it's little for us, it's a lot for them. Because to be able to stay behind us by just one glue, our unfortunate opponents have tried everything. They ousted Mazzarri, they brought Mancini back to the bench, the coach who in the heart of the Inter fans is behind only Mourinho, they ran a pharaonic January campaign and, as is Tohir's style, without chasing a euro (transfer rights, ransom, I'll give it to you but I don't know, see you in June, etc.).
This opens a small but hilarious chapter on the financial hangouts of the so-called Jakarta tycoon. Agreed, he's not listed on the Stock Exchange and has no information obligations, but has anyone figured out how much Tohir has put in so far? The only certain thing is that he has spun off the football club from the sports club, giving it as a guarantee to the banks for past and future debts, thereby avoiding recapitalization and condemning Inter, a bit like Greece, to being a special observation of financial fair play. This is why the accusation of bankruptcy that rained down on Mancini's head is a bit funny. Here "the best is yet to come" to quote the title of the unmemorable autobiography of Mazzarri (unfortunately fired some time later).
Moreover, Milan also risks taking this sad slope. Thai brokers, consortiums of Chinese, Berlusconi seems to have resumed the old habit of keeping bad company. Because one thing is Abramovic or the sultan of Brunei, who maybe you don't know how they made their money but there's no doubt that they have it, it's another to deal with people who represent a consortium of other people, who in 10 or 15 maybe put together what it takes. To have a fake rich like Tohir, let's keep a former patron of the arts and today dumb like Berlusconi. We become aware of the sad reality. Juve of the Marchionne era has now taken on a global dimension that allows it to find friends not only among the usual Italian referees, but also among international ones, as we saw in the details allowed by high definition in the match against Monaco. The derby has become a war between the poor, let's not reduce it to a feud between the poor. And above all, we try to win that war between the poor. Because we can say, even after many seasons: of course, 2015 was the annus horribilis of Milanese football, but at least in the derby…
