“We Inter fans must apologize to Inzaghi» wrote Beppe Severgnini on Corriere della Sera in the aftermath of the double cup success against Milan. In fact, we’ve told them about every one. We are fans of aesthetes and snobs and twelve defeats in the league combine badly for us even with a Champions League final. Winning the Coppa Italia changes things by a touch, but no, I’m not apologizing to anyone; it wouldn’t be an interist to do so. The Inter fan is a unique animal in the world of football. He gives little or nothing to the team, but he always feels credited. He watches the match only if things go well and he is a cartel, because otherwise he has something better to do; we’re not Milan or Lazio supporters, who live with the Serie A calendar on the screensaver of the mobile phone.
On the other hand, we Interisti have criticism in our blood, a couple of highlights are enough for us to express final judgments, we don’t even need a summary, anyway after five minutes we’re already bored and we go to the stadium just to watch the girls grandstand because football as seen from the sofa at home, never anywhere else. And let it be clear, better alone or at most with a couple of affiliates, because we are too squeamish about the crowd. If Inter are crazy it’s not by their nature, they only do it to keep us glued. Yes, because while the others sigh for their team, we make ourselves desired, we are the beautiful woman to conquer, and who in any case stays for a while. Don’t believe it? Think of the journalists who write books about the Beneamata: nine times out of ten the team is in the background, an excuse to talk about themselves. Perhaps this is why Berlusconi, as an Inter fan, chose to buy Milan. He sensed that with us he would never have been the protagonist while the Rossoneri, in order to win, were willing to be commanded for twenty-five years by an Nerazzurri fox and a Juventus businessman. Victory inebriates us, like everyone else, but just for a couple of days.
Mourinho had guessed it very well, who after winning the Triplete, an unrepeatable feat, didn’t even go back to Milan to celebrate. Letting go at the moment of orgasm is the only way to be regretted, even at the price of being hated; and our curses are felt, given that for when “special”, on balance we have to regret him, since we were the highest moment of his career but he is not the best in our history. José is not an idiot, he knew that no victory would save him from the massacre the following year, the first of lean cows. Even Simone Inzaghi, “sorry” for the others, as a great football man, understood many things about Inter. Which allowed him to carry on seemingly unperturbed with each broadside. He is an ascetic, of the Interista he has the love for impossible challenges and the courage of imprudence; otherwise it is not explained how, every game, in the seventieth minute he makes those we know get off the bench to put him on the field, at the risk of his being on the bench and the lives of all of us.
But maybe he’s right, because no one can say how the oldest team in Europe got to the bottom of everything, playing almost everything, playing more games than anyone else. He has a zen strength that comes from having made the omelette right away, right from the first year, giving Milan a Scudetto that they had already won, due to his mania for unfortunate substitutions also perpetrated in the decisive derby, overturned by Pioli thanks to the substitutions of Simon. And if not even nine years in Rome have taught you that the derby is important, more than respecting the exchange rate rule… In any case, the real difference between an Inter fan is the strength of not needing to have the most trophy cabinet to feel the best; because he’s the best, even if the team, certainly not this one, sucks… So we’ve been celebrating for a week, and we’ll celebrate for the next three, an impossible match and a cup that maybe not even Sarti, Burgnich would be able to raise , Facchetti… However it goes, we’ve already had a party, that reality and the matches are just a side dish. We are not vulgar enough to be fans.
