Inter-AC Milan to face off this weekend at Gillette Stadium

A rivalry for the ages
Inter-AC Milan match more than exhibition

By Frank Dell’Apa, Globe Staff | July 23, 2009

In March 1908, several disenchanted members of the Milan Cricket & Football Club gathered at a restaurant in the center of the city. The group’s desire to include more international players on the soccer team had been resisted, so they decided to start another club. They called it FC Internazionale, reflecting their more worldly view of sport.

The resulting rivalry between AC Milan and Inter served as a stimulus, both leaving behind innocent beginnings to join the ranks of the world’s most powerful clubs, turning the Lombardia region of Italy into a soccer capital, as well as a center for fashion. In 1963, Milan became the first team outside the Iberian peninsula to win the Champions Cup. Inter won the 1964 and ’65 competitions, then Milan took the title in 1969. Milan increased the stakes, setting standards for the global game and winning five Champions titles from 1989-2007. No other city has produced more than one Champions Cup/League-winning club, and the combined nine titles of Inter and Milan equals Real Madrid’s total.

Inter and Milan share the stage at San Siro, an 82,000-seat stadium built in the 1920s and renovated for the 1990 World Cup. The teams meet twice a season, a “derby’’ match that these days overwhelms the opening of the La Scala opera season for attention. At stake are bragging rights and, often, gaining an advantage in the race for the “scudetto,’’ awarded to the winner of the 20-team Serie A. Both have won 17 times, Inter four in succession (one thanks to the revoking of Juventus’s win in a corruption scandal).

Now, though, Italian clubs are in a period of transition. Their financial ambition has been outstripped by English and Spanish clubs, and no Serie A representative has advanced past the Champions League quarterfinals since 2007.

So, the Inter-Milan exhibition at Gillette Stadium at 5 p.m. Sunday could provide an indication of the direction of both teams.

Inter, true to its origins, brings a varied roster - 23 foreigners representing 13 countries. Coach Jose Mourinho, who is Portuguese, overpaid for Amantino Mancini and Ricardo Quaresma last year, discouraging Massimo Moratti, the Inter president, from ambitious spending this time. Moratti, attempting to equal the success of his father, Angelo, who controlled the club in the ’60s, has been reluctant to bid for Chelsea defender Ricardo Carvalho and midfielder Deco, and could be losing Swedish striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic to Barcelona in exchange for Samuel Eto’o.

But Mourinho’s influence is apparent on the field - he has promoted Italian teenagers Mario Barwuah Balotelli, a Sicily-born striker of Ghanaian descent, and Davide Santon, a defender - and off the field. Inter’s two-week tour of the US is his idea for expanding the brand.

Inter arrived in Boston yesterday, after playing to a 1-1 tie with Club America in Palo Alto and losing (2-0) to Chelsea in Pasadena in the four-team World Football Challenge tournament.

Ibrahimovic spent part of the afternoon at Massachusetts General Hospital for treatment of a bruised left wrist, sustained in the Chelsea game, while his teammates trained at Harvard University. (Milan will not arrive until Saturday, the day after meeting Chelsea in Baltimore). Ibrahimovic’s status has apparently upset Mourinho so much he has refused to comment for several days, and yesterday did not meet with reporters after practice.

But this is just the start of Inter’s travels. The team returns to Italy next week, preparing for the Italian Super Cup, scheduled Aug. 8 in Beijing. This preseason program is far removed from past training camps, which were hard-core, physical conditioning sessions held at Alpine resorts.

And it reminds Romano Pagliarani of the innovations of foreign coaches that long ago helped transform Italian calcio.

“It used to be they were getting ready for the season, and that’s it,’’ said Pagliarani, 70, a Brighton resident who suited up for Inter teams in the Campionato De Martino (a sort of minor league) in the 1950s. “But I see the positive aspect of coming here to play. The new coaches, the foreign coaches, bring a different mentality.’’

In the ’50s and ’60s, Inter coaches included Jesse Carver, an Englishman, and Helenio Herrera, who arrived by way of Argentina and Morocco. Herrera’s megalomaniacal approach produced two European Cup wins and attracted a passionate following throughout Italy. Inter has failed to recapture that glory, the weight of the past becoming especially burdensome as the Nerazzurri (Black and Blues) have been eclipsed by the Milan Rossoneri (Red and Blacks).

Mourinho, an iconcoclastic coach who won the Champions League with Porto in 2004, is expected to return Inter to prominence. So far, Mourinho has upset the order in Italy, as he did in England as Chelsea’s coach, but has not made progress in the Champions League.

Inter, though, is expanding its horizons with an ambitious marketing excursion. And a 100-year-old rivalry (Milan defeated Inter, 3-2, the first time they met Jan. 10, 1909) is finding an audience in New England - a crowd of about 50,000 is expected Sunday.

“It’s a derby and friendlies don’t exist between these teams,’’ said Inter assistant coach Giuseppe Baresi, who played in Inter-Milan games against his brother, Franco. “Friendlies don’t exist between Inter and Milan. It’s a game we always want to win, whether it’s in the city we live in, or in Boston - even in the middle of summer, we want to win.’’

Exhibition soccer
Who: Inter Milan vs. AC Milan
When: Sunday, 5 p.m.
Where: Gillette Stadium
TV/radio: ESPN2

Frank Dell’Apa can be reached at f_dellapa@globe.com.
© Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company