Article 51 — Inter Spoiling My Mood In The Morning
There must be an English word to describe the feeling of disappointment in the morning at the failure of your team. The failure can come in the form of a defeat or elimination from a tournament.
When it comes to Inter, this is a feeling I have had from before the enforced break due to the Corona Virus pandemic. In such cases, I am always looking for the next match to come soon so that I can replace this feeling of disappointment with hopefully the positive feeling of joy. We didn’t have a next match to look forward to until the Coppa Italia semi-final, 2nd leg early Sunday morning in Singapore.
I couldn’t watch the match because in Singapore the telecommunication companies that provide TV cable subscription want its customers to bleed from the nose and anus to watch European football matches. To be able to watch Coppa Italia matches, I would need to pay for a separate cable subscription which is not an economically friendly option to me. As for the alternative of watching in on illegal streams, I don’t like watching matches on the laptop through illegal streams because it gets laggy and spoils the experience of watching a match “live”.
Anyways, at 7 am in the morning when my eyes just about opened for the first time since I went to sleep, I checked the score and found out that Inter had drawn 1–1 against Napoli and are therefore eliminated from the Coppa Italia. I have said this before that the next step for Inter is to win a Cup. Conte was hired to bring us up to the next level which is instilling a winning mentality to win trophies. The Coppa Italia was our best bet and shot at winning a trophy this season and we have failed.
After watching the highlights of the first and second leg against Napoli, I noticed that we dominated both games but the reality is that in two games, we could only score one goal. We needed to score more and keep out the opposition. We couldn’t do either. Dominating games only gets you so far, there has to be an end result to the dominance and this is where a strong, winning mentality comes into play. Sadly, we are still lacking in that aspect.
Of course, the season is not over yet. There is an outside chance at the Scudetto provided we can start winning and keep a long winning and unbeaten run to the end of the season going. That would not be enough if we don’t receive favours from the opponents of Juventus and Lazio to enable us to win the Scudetto.
There is still a shot at silverware in the Europa League too but there are still some steps yet to the end of that journey and some tough teams we could face on the way there. I doubted our seriousness in this competition previously but now that the season is being completed competition by competition, Inter could reach the Europa League with their full focus only on this competition. The seriousness and priority could change.
Over in the other Coppa Italia semi-final that took place on Saturday morning in Singapore, Juventus drew 0–0 against AC Milan to progress to the final on away goals rule. Cristiano Ronaldo missed a first-half penalty and a minute later, Ante Rebic was sent off for a high foot challenge on Danilo.
If the roles were reversed, I am sure the Juventus player will not even get a yellow card and the referee would have ignored viewing it on the VAR. I say this in jest after witnessing years of largely preferential treatment from the referees for Juventus, a sentiment that is commonly felt by non-Juventus fans. In reality, I got to admit that there are times when Juventus do get punished too and Juventus fans will counter that claim to say that there have been times where they do get unfairly punished.
Anyways Juventus dominated the match but was not clinical enough and couldn’t create enough chances to win it. There wasn’t much in terms of chances for Milan logically as they were playing with 10 men for most of the match and were already missing key players from before kickoff.
The Coppa Italia final between Juventus and Napoli will be played on the 24th June, Wednesday, in Italy at the Stadio Olimpico, Rome. One of Napoli’s key men in their progress to the Coppa Italia final, goalkeeper David Ospina is suspended for collecting two yellow cards in the Coppa. Juventus will enter the final as favourites but I hope Napoli can somehow upset the odds to win the Coppa Italia. For obvious reasons, as an Inter fan, I wouldn’t want Juventus to win anything if that is possible.
Another reason is that Juventus have won the Coppa for 4 seasons in a row until Lazio interrupted that run last season and someone other than Juventus needs to win it again this time. Italian football has been completely dominated by Juventus since they won their first post-Calciopoli Scudetto in 2011–12. Italian football needs its other teams to step it up and win the Serie A and Coppa Italia to make the competition interesting. It’s boring for the neutrals if only one team dominates for years on end. It would do the league good as well to have tighter, closer competition, making it unpredictable on who would win the Coppa and league each season.
