Article 31 — Inter 97–00
In the summer of 1997, Massimo Moratti pulled off the first signing that will go on to symbolise his version of the Galaticos at Inter. He pulled off a transfer coup that nobody saw coming at that time and pleasantly surprised me by breaking the world record transfer fee at that time for the world’s best player at that time, the original Ronaldo.
Before we can go on with the 1997–98 season, let me just point out that in the previous summer of 1996, Inter had signed a Nigerian Nwankwo Kanu from Ajax fresh from his exploits of winning the Olympic gold medal with his native Nigeria. He didn’t play a single game in the 1996–97 season for Inter though because he had a serious heart defect that fortunately for him was discovered during a medical examination for Inter. He had surgery to replace an aortic valve and was back in the squad fit and scored 1 goal this season.
Alongside Ronaldo, Moratti had signed Argentine Diego Simeone from Atletico Madrid, an unknown Uruguayan Alvaro Recoba, Brazilian Ze Elias, Frenchman Benoit Cauet, Nigerian Taribo West and Italians Mauro Milanese, Luigi Sartor, Francesco Colonnese, Francesco Moriero and Luca Mezzano. Moriero would turn out to be a revelation this season on the right-wing and would be commonly known for this shoe-shine celebration.
In the summer of 1997 and during the course of the season, Alessandro Pistone left to join English club, Newcastle United, Paul Ince returned to England to join Liverpool, Nicola Berti also moved to England to join Tottenham Hotspur, Ciriaco Sforza left to join Kaiserslautern, Jocelyn Angloma joined Valencia, Maurizio Ganz joined our neighbours AC Milan and Massimo Paganin joined Bologna.
This was to be the first season since I became a fan that Inter were genuinely in a title race. Ronaldo was overshadowed on his debut by the unknown Uruguayan Recoba who unleashed a couple of cracking stunners to overcome a 0–1 deficit and win the first game of the season for us, 2–1.
Ronaldo finally got off the mark for the season in the next match, billed Ronaldo vs Baggio, away at Bologna. The match lived up to it’s billing as Baggio scored twice for Bologna and Ronaldo produced great skill to score his first-ever Inter goal as we won 4–2.
From then on, it was a tight title race until the controversial meeting against league leaders and defending champions, Juventus at the Stadio Delle Alpi on the 26th April 1998. Juventus led by a point and took the lead in the game through their star player, Alessandro Del Piero. Inter were then denied a stonewall penalty in the second half and as Inter protested vehemently, Juventus played on and got awarded a penalty of their own at the other end for a similar foul. Del Piero missed his spot-kick as some form of consolation and justice. Juventus won 1–0 to extend their lead at the top. Juventus went on to win the Scudetto 5 points clear of Inter.
I had already begun disliking Juventus for favouring Del Piero over Baggio and discarding him at his prime but this season gave birth to a fierce, deep rivalry and animosity with Juventus. Looking back at the league campaign that season, Inter had themselves to blame as well for not taking advantage of Juventus’ slip-ups. We lost too many games that season and controversy aside, we had only ourselves to blame. We only got as far as the quarter-final in the Coppa Italia, losing 5–1 on aggregate to our neighbours, AC Milan. This was the first season in my time as a fan, where Inter were superior to their neighbours but yet contrived to lose heavily to them in the Coppa Italia probably due to a lack of emphasis placed on the domestic cup competition.
We went all the way to the final of the UEFA Cup again, the first to be played over a single leg in Paris at the Parc des Princes. Along the way, we exerted revenge in knocking out defending champions Schalke 04 in the quarter-finals. We faced a familiar foe, Lazio in the final. During the season, we had drawn against them at San Siro and lost 0–3 to them at the Olimpico so this will not be easy. Inter turned up all guns blazing in the final and produced a fantastic display to avenge the 0–3 suffered at Olimpico to beat the Roman side by the same scoreline in Paris to win the UEFA Cup. It will be the third time in the 90s that Inter has won the UEFA Cup and my second triumph as a fan.
The big-name arrival for the 1998–99 season was my all-time favourite player, Roberto Baggio. It was a dream come true for me to have my favourite player playing for my favourite club. Joining him were young Frenchmen, Sebastian Frey, Mikael Silvestre, Ousmane Dabo and Zoumana Camara, Portuguese Paulo Sousa, highly-rated, young Italians, Nicola Ventola, Andrea Pirlo and Cristiano Zanetti. Young Croatian, Dario Simic arrived in the winter.
Nwankwo Kanu left to join Arsenal in England, Marco Branca joined him in England at Middlesbrough, Luigi Sartor joined Parma, Salvatore Fresi, Dabo, Camara, Cristiano Zanetti, Recoba, Mezzano all left on loan at different stages of the season.
There were high hopes that with a stellar attacking line-up that had Baggio and Ventola added to Ronaldo, Zamorano with the creative talent of Djorkaeff, fresh from winning the World Cup with France over the summer, we would be able to go one better than the previous season in the league. We didn’t and had a dismal season, ending it in 8th place. To make matters worse, we missed out on qualification to Europe after losing a playoff against Bologna, 2–4 between the two teams that were knocked out in the semi-finals of Coppa Italia. Ironically, Bologna had finished the season, one place lower than us. We were knocked out in the semi-final of the Coppa Italia by Parma.
This season was the first time we saw Moratti’s judgement as a fan influence his decisions. Last season’s manager, Luigi Simoni who did a great job last season was sacked in November 1998 to be replaced by Mircea Lucescu who lasted until March 1999 before Luciano Castellini was promoted to be the caretaker manager until April 1999 before the return of Roy Hodgson until the end of the season. In a below-par season, there was an incredible match played on my birthday, 2nd May in 1999 against Roma at Stadio Olimpico which Inter shaded 5–4.
Inter had to navigate through a playoff against Latvian side, Skonto Riga, winning 7–1 on aggregate to qualify for the group stage of the Champions League. Inter overcame a 0–2 defeat away to defending champions, Real Madrid to remain unbeaten for the rest of the group stage including an incredible late 3–1 win over the Spanish giants thanks to 2 late goals by Baggio coming off the bench to top the group ahead of Real Madrid. In the quarter-finals, my heart was torn as both my favourite clubs, Manchester United and Inter played each other. It was a tie I dreaded that was won 3–1 on aggregate by United on their way to a momentous achievement of winning the Treble.
There was a sea of change in the blue and black half of San Siro in the summer of 1999. Marcello Lippi, the catalyst to our bitter rivals, Juventus’ success in the mid-90s was hired as our coach.
There was to be another blockbuster signing, we broke the world transfer record fee again by signing Christian Vieri from Lazio. In that summer, Lippi brought along a couple of his trusted players from his time at Juventus, Angelo Peruzzi and Vladimir Jugovic. The others we signed were Greek Grigoris Georgatos, Italians Fabrizio Ferron, Luigi Di Biagio, Christian Panucci, Ivorian Cyril Domoraud and World Champion, Frenchman, Laurent Blanc. In the winter, we signed Dutchman Clarence Seedorf, Italian Michele Serena, at that time, little-known Colombian Ivan Cordoba and young Romanian, Adrian Mutu.
There were some significant players that were sold in the summer. Gianluca Pagliuca and Nicola Ventola to Bologna, Youri Djorkaeff to Kaiserslautern, Aaron Winter returned to Ajax Amsterdam and Diego Simeone to Lazio. Others that left were the colourful Nigerian, Taribo West to AC Milan, young Cristiano Zanetti to Roma, Fabio Galante to Torino, Ze Elias to Bologna, young Ousmane Dabo to Parma, Mikael Silvestre to Manchester United and in the winter, Paulo Sousa to Parma. Club captain, Giuseppe Bergomi retired from football at the end of the 1998–99 season.
In a season that promised a lot at the start with the appointment of Lippi and the signings we made, we got off to a great start including a 5–1 thrashing of Parma in our 3rd game of the season at San Siro.
We then started stumbling as injuries took a toll with the most significant one being that of Ronaldo’s ruptured tendon in his knee in the match against Lecce at San Siro. One of the matches that I would remember for the wrong reasons was the 2–1 defeat at Bari. We have lost to Bari home and away for the past 2 seasons and they were our bogey team now. However, this defeat stood out because a young Italian talent by the name of Antonio Cassano burst onto the scene with a wonderful winning goal.
Inter’s 2–1 defeat of Roma at San Siro was sweet for me because Baggio who had been marginalised for most of the season due to Lippi’s personal vendetta against him inspired the victory.
There was also a very notable 2–2 draw against Lazio, who would go on to win the Scudetto this season, at Stadio Olimpico after we took a 2–0 lead. Alvaro Recoba opened the scoring in this match with a great piece of skill and a finish to match. We were left feeling like two points dropped although, for Lazio, it would feel like the least they deserved for bombarding us throughout the game.
Inter finished the league in 4th place, level on points with Parma and had to play a playoff to decide which team would qualify for the Champions League.
It was a match full of drama behind closed doors. Baggio was asked to stay on by President Moratti but Baggio refused, issuing an ultimatum that it is either he stays or Lippi to which Moratti replied that if they don’t qualify for the Champions League, Lippi is gone.
Thanks to the injury crisis facing the Inter forward line, Lippi had very little choice but to start Baggio who scored two superb goals and beat Parma 3–1 to seal his fate and guaranteed a future away from Inter. He gave Inter fans something to remember him by for years to come. It was a performance of great professionalism and class by the Divine Ponytail after being marginalised and not given a fair chance for large parts of the season by the manager.
We finally reached the final of the Coppa Italia this season where we played against Lazio. In the first leg of the final played at Stadio Olimpico, Rome, Ronaldo made his return from his serious injury but last only 6 minutes before crumbling to the ground when he was executing his famous step-over. He suffered a complete rupture of the tendons of his knee cap. Inter lost the first leg 1–2 before drawing the return leg 0–0. Lazio completed the Double of League and Cup. We qualified for the Champions League, an improvement to the previous season but overall a disappointing season after the high hopes we had going into the season.
The 90s concluded in a world of fantasy for Inter fans created by our President, Massimo Moratti. From 1996–97, with the signings of Djorkaeff and Zamorano, he started amassing a dream forward line which continued with the signings of Ronaldo, Baggio and Vieri. Recoba was signed too but emerged from the unknown and Ventola, lasted a season but at the time of his signing, was highly sought after. When things worked out, it was a joy to watch and I feel all Inter fans will remember the forwards we had from 1996–97 to 1999–00 with a lot of fondness.
However, what he forgot was to get the balance of the squad right with defenders and defensive-minded players of quality. There were only a few players that we had of good quality in those positions namely Giuseppe Bergomi, Javier Zanetti when he played in defence and Laurent Blanc. With all due respect, Taribo West, Salvatore Fresi, Francesco Colonesse, Fabio Galante and Mauro Milanese didn’t provide us with that quality. West, Fresi and Galante had a good reputation at youth level for their countries. Silvestre was too fresh-faced and raw and Simic was getting to the grips of the Italian game. Ivan Cordoba was a rare signing that wasted no time settling in and actually showed himself to be a good defender.
Losing Diego Simeone was also another blow. He left us and went on to win the Scudetto with Lazio the season after. Jugovic and Paulo Sousa looked past their best when they were with us. Winter was under-rated and should have stayed on and Ze Elias did a decent job too. I was never much of a fan of Cauet. Paul Ince left due to family reasons but if he stayed on, he would have greatly added the team too.
He was also too soon in sacking Luigi Simoni who had done a great job in the 1997–98 season, letting his emotions as a fan cloud his judgement, unfortunately. In the coaching department, we lacked stability. There were 3 managerial changes in 1995–96 and 4 changes in the 1998–99 season, far too many and especially in the case of Simoni, it was far too soon. Things would get better for us in the new Millenium though but not before getting worse first.
