Zanchetta: "Nothing beats winning with Inter"

APPIANO GENTILE - Andrea Zanchetta revealed that his team's Scudetto triumph felt particularly special to him as a former Nerazzurri academy product himself.

The U17 coach, who came through Inter's youth ranks in the 1990s and made five appearances for the senior side before spending the rest of his career elsewhere, returned to the club to take over the Under-17s at the start of the season.

Speaking to Inter Channel the day after his side clinched the league title with a 3-2 win over Atalanta, he said: "It was a great game to watch – real end to end stuff with plenty of chances and goals. It was a thrilling match and one we're glad to win.

“For me personally, it feels very special because nothing beats winning with Inter. There's a whole lot of work that's gone into this success with the club behind the scenes and it's paid off."

Zanchetta added that he felt fate was on Inter's side going into the final.

“As a coach, you often get hunches and the lads have looked different to me in the last few months compared to at the start of the year. Football matches are decided by moments but my boys played as a team and really worked hard for each other. They fully deserved to win the Scudetto – with all due respect to Atalanta.

“I'm really pleased with their mental maturity – they've made big improvement there. They put in a lot of work and paid a small price for that at the beginning but they've grown game on game and if they've ended up winning the league, it's credit to them.

“I was calmer than usual – though it's easy to say that now, of course. There were times in the season where things didn't go the way they should have but, as I said, I was calm because you could see we were a team and we wanted to win this title.”