Del cielo e della note - Ahead of Inter vs. Napoli

We’ve seen many defenders in our lifetime. Riccardo Ferri was the first we remember, a stopper who seemed gigantic to us in both stature and value. One hundred and eighty-three centimeters, the official measurements say: football has changed, and so have the physical dimensions of players. But Ricky was Ricky. Our fathers told us about Picchi and Guarneri; we also had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing Aristide. At almost eighty-eight years old, he still does gymnastics every day and rides his bike around Cremona. Then we witnessed the nastiness of Walter Samuel, who would “baptise” the most dangerous opponent with a little caress in the first seconds of the match, when referees are a bit more cautious about pulling out yellow cards. We saw the almost brutal fury of Lúcio, who would sometimes surge forward, the speed of Iván Córdoba, the mastery in the air of Marco Materazzi, someone who had worked his way up through all the lower levels, as they say today, and once he reached the top of the world, he never wanted to come back down. More recently we’ve seen Stefan de Vrij and Francesco Acerbi, two different yet equally effective ways of playing as a centre-back in modern football: elegant in build-up play the Dutchman, old school like certain Milanese rappers the Italian, heir to the noble art of man-marking. But today we want to dedicate the introduction to Manuel Akanji, who in the league has not missed a single minute so far, we’re already well into January, with the clear feeling that every minute he plays is better than the previous one. The masterclass on display in Parma is just the cover image of a thrilling start to the season, and some people, quietly but not too quietly, are beginning to mention his name as a candidate for Serie A MVP. A physical giant of a man, lightning fast, with the feet of a midfielder, it's no coincidence that Guardiola would occasionally deploy him there, and it’s certainly not for everyone to play in the middle of Pep’s midfields. Simply put: Akanji, the professor.

We are here, where everything began to take shape, one round later: Inter vs. Napoli after Napoli vs. Inter. The first-leg was a very strange match, one that Inter dominated in the opening half hour but which Napoli unlocked with a penalty spotted belatedly by the assistant referee, like any assistant standing a good thirty meters away from the scene of the crime, real or presumed. It was also Kevin De Bruyne’s final kick of the ball in 2025, as he got injured right as he took the penalty. Without him, Antonio Conte has certainly lost some quality, but has gained enormously in compactness, rolling out a 3-4-3 system that fully enhances the qualities of David Neres—doubtful until the very end, who was decisive in the first leg as a false nine. Inter and Napoli are back battling for the Scudetto, after last season and after the glory days, as per the Springsteen song, of Maradona and Matthäus, who also faced each other in two World Cup finals, one win apiece. But let’s put things in order and take a brief yet instructive journey through the history of this fixture, which began to appear firmly on the map of Italian football in 1989, when the two teams were indeed fighting it out for the Scudetto. Trapattoni’s Inter with Matthäus, and Napoli with Maradona plus, essentially, ten others—though the supporting cast was more than worthy: Ciro Ferrara, Careca, Alemao. But it was Maradona versus Matthäus; they were the ones who decided the championship. In those years, Serie A was the centre of the footballing world, and it took very little to shift the balance. Between 1982 and 1991, seven different teams lifted the Scudetto in nine seasons. To put it in perspective, from 1991 to today, over thirty-five editions, only six teams have won the title. In 1988 it was won by Sacchi’s Milan, and above all by the three Dutchmen; Van Basten, Gullit and Rijkaard, quite simply the top three in that year’s Ballon d’Or rankings, even though Rijkaard arrived after the title. The gap with the rest of the competition was too wide, and in those years closing it meant not getting your foreign signings wrong. Clubs could register two foreigners, but in the summer of 1988 an extra slot was added. Inter didn’t hesitate and picked Lothar Matthäus and Andy Brehme from Bayern Munich. The third was Ramón Díaz, on loan from Fiorentina, who together with Aldo Serena would form one of the most perfectly balanced strike partnerships in Inter’s history. Lothar was the leader, beyond the goals and assists, with incredible authority both on and off the pitch. Diego was Diego, there's no need to say more. In the first leg at the San Paolo, they faced each other, but Trapattoni’s tactics, Beppe Baresi glued man-to-man to Maradona, worked perfectly. It ended 0–0, exactly as Inter had hoped, and in the meantime Inter began to pull away. At San Siro, four matchdays from the end, Napoli were hanging on by a thread: a win would have given them hope of getting back into the race. For Trapattoni’s Inter, instead, a win would seal the title. Napoli started strongly and took the lead through Careca, but Inter had an extra gear. They equalised through Berti, history records it as a Luca Fusi own-goal under the rules of the time, but here we make our own rules, and above all we love Nicolino, so we give him back a goal he deserved. Then, in the 83rd minute, came a free-kick. Over the ball stood Andy Brehme and Lothar Matthäus, with Riccardo Ferri ready for a power solution. But the solution was delivered by Lothar Matthäus himself, with a right-footed strike of terrifying power. It was the Scudetto goal. Inter lifted their thirteenth title in the most important match of all.

It hasn’t always been a love song, Napoli vs. Inter. In the thirty five-plus years since that May afternoon, the two sides haven’t fought for the Scudetto every single season. In the 2000s they lived very different realities. Napoli even spent two seasons in Serie C, before the De Laurentiis–led rebirth, with back-to-back promotions and a stable return to the upper reaches of Serie A. Inter vs. Napoli in the first decade of the new millennium was a rivalry made up of flashes. Ivan Zamorano’s backheel goal, one to watch again and again, a piece of magic from the Chilean we never tire of. Julio Cruz’s elegant brace. The grace with which Laurent Blanc finished a move after two one-twos, dribbling past the goalkeeper as well. Muntari’s backheel goal and Córdoba’s acrobatic finish, in a match where everything seemed allowed, even to players who perhaps didn’t have the technical skills of a classic playmaker. Then the ruthlessness with which the Treble-winning Inter killed the game in five minutes, the opening minutes, in a September match. After that, Napoli returned to the Champions League, and in the 2010s the balance of power almost flipped.

Cavani, Hamsik and Lavezzi were the trio that sparked the first dreams; Higuaín brought Napoli close to the Scudetto dream, which would then come a few years later. Inter vs. Napoli remained fiercely contested, and Inter’s victories were nonetheless born of class and grit.

January 2011 brought a masterclass in midfield runs. Two professors took the stage: Thiago Motta, born in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, but with clear Italian roots, and Esteban Cambiasso, who scored 51 goals with Inter over exactly a decade—numbers more typical of a backup striker than a holding midfielder.

December 2012, as you can hear in another Inter Media House podcast, Tutti quei km, narrated by a voice more famous and musical than mine, featured goals that were accidental and others that were instead the result of perfectly executed plans.

April 2016, Mauro Icardi and Marcelo Brozović, without a doubt the two symbolic figures of an Inter side trying to get back on its feet and return to the Champions League, sealed a crucial victory with two moments of pure brilliance.

Then the Lautaro era began, ushered in by a symbolic handover with another Argentine striker. The 2018/19 season opened with Mauro Icardi wearing number nine and the captain’s armband, and Inter vs. Napoli became the emblematic match of that relay. The game kicked off with a Maradona-esque play by Icardi, who struck the crossbar straight from kickoff, it would have been the fastest goal in Serie A history, and perhaps the craziest. Instead, the match closed with the first true flash of Lautaro. He had already scored in the league for Inter against Frosinone and Cagliari, but in less demanding games. Against Napoli, on the first, and so far only, Boxing Day in Serie A history (a shame it didn’t continue, it was a fun idea), Inter won at the very last breath with Lautaro’s first real Lautaro moment: a deflected touch in the 94th minute, fuelled by the fury of someone who knew it was only a matter of time before he would take over San Siro, but who could no longer wait. Lautaro Javier Martínez. 1-0.

And then? We move on to the chronicle. With Conte on the bench, Inter beat Napoli twice: two careful, measured, essential, no-nonsense matches. Then Simone Inzaghi arrived, and perhaps the defining game of his cycle was right against Napoli. On 21 October 2021, Inter went behind to a goal. A defeat would have more or less meant breaking ranks, but instead Inter turned it around and put their season back on track. A Çalhanoğlu penalty, a moment of Ivan Perišić’s cleverness, another strike from Lautaro Martínez. The match reopened late on with Mertens’ goal and stayed alive until the very last breath, but Inter saw it through. Napoli were not yet a Scudetto team, they would become one the following year, but at San Siro they still had to bow. Džeko’s goal, from a sumptuous assist by Dimarco, gave Inter the momentum for an exhilarating Champions League run, bitter ending aside, and in the league it was enough to secure a third-place finish. The penultimate Inter vs. Napoli was a runway toward the second star, with goals by Darmian and the former Inter player Juan Jesus. The most recent one, instead, was a boxing match. Antonio Conte set it up to avoid defeat, and he succeeded, but only thanks to a missed penalty by Hakan Çalhanoğlu. Since the Turk has been at Inter, there have been two total solar eclipses, one Olympics, and two missed penalties: the first struck the post to Meret’s right and killed Inter’s comeback at birth. Before that came McTominay’s goal and then the equaliser by the Turk himself, a stunning long-range strike. And now?

Just a moment—we’ll get there. First, the Inter player you don’t remember. The Inter player you don’t remember when talking about Inter vs. Napoli is Igor Shalimov. “He came from Russia, Gorbachev brought him—Shalimov, Shalimov.” Fan chants, as we know, should be taken with a pinch of salt, even the uncensorable ones, but they often tell you more than many other things about the spirit of the times. And Gorbachev did have something to do with it, since the Soviet Union no longer existed in 1991, when Shalimov moved to Italy, to Foggia of Foggia, as the Russian was keen to point out in an interview. The son of a factory worker, he could only play for Spartak. Hobbies? Reading Dostoevsky, playing chess, and a third, distinctly Russian product that we won’t name—but that you can easily guess. Foggia of Foggia was above all Zdeněk Zeman’s team, a coach who like no other knew how to bring out his players’ attacking talent. And Igor was no exception: 33 matches, nine goals, not bad at all for a midfielder. The call was the right one: Inter, where he became the fourth foreign player, after Darko Pančev, Rubén Sosa and Matthias Sammer. In the Nerazzurri shirt he had ups and downs but still found a few goals, even scoring two against Juventus, home and away. Then his form dipped and loan spells began, before a permanent transfer. He returned to Italy, also passing through Napoli, but he was only a shadow of the magnificent player from Zeman’s Foggia and of his first year at Inter.

As we were saying: and Napoli? How it will end, we don’t know—but since the first-leg match, Inter have become a different team. After the defeat at the Maradona, Inter have played ten matches, losing only one, unfortunately the Derby, winning the other nine, scoring 21 goals and conceding four. Now, the final step is needed.