Ragtag band of Inter Milan veterans out to ambush Man City in Champions League final

Italians are big underdogs against Pep Guardiola's expensively assembled team of aristocrats in Istanbul

Edin Dzeko celebrates with teammates after scoring for Iinter Milan in the Champions League semi-final first leg against AC Milan at the San Siro on May 10, 2023. Getty

A few years back, when David Beckham was preparing to move his career upstairs, from ex-playing legend to club owner, he was hit with a lawsuit.

Inter Miami, the start-up project aiming to join the American MLS, were being pursued by Internazionale, or Inter Milan as they are often known, for trademark infringement. There was only one real “Inter” in football, the Italians claimed, and the name should be exclusively theirs.

That wrangle still rumbles on and, as Italy’s Inter prepare for their most important, high-profile fixture for 13 years, tomorrow’s Champions League final against Manchester City, they may now wonder if they can still claim to be the most famous Inter in the sport.

Lionel Messi’s announcement this week he will be joining Inter Miami has boosted the MLS institution as almost nothing else could.

Time was when Inter of Serie A used to be linked with signing Messi, back in his peak years with Barcelona.

Those stories were based mostly on wishful thinking in Milan. But there were times in the past 15 years when Inter might have found the budget for the scale of bid needed to sign the world’s very finest footballers.

Those times are now past. The Inter who line up in Istanbul represent a triumph of pragmatism in austerity.

Their manager Simone Inzaghi, who took on the role in 2021 after Antonio Conte left complaining about the restricted budget, knows it whenever he studies his line-up.

In Istanbul he will make his key decision on who to start at centre-forward between a 37-year-old who came in on a free transfer, Edin Dzeko, and Romelu Lukaku, who belongs to Chelsea and is only back for his second spell at Inter on loan because his €120 million move to London had turned sour.

Dzeko, formerly of City, and Lukaku have each scored 14 goals this season in their 51 (Dzeko) and 36 (Lukaku) appearances. That’s barely a quarter of the astonishing 52 goals in as many games that Erling Haaland has netted for City, 36 of them in the Premier League, a competition the Norwegian is trying out for the first time, having joined the English champions only last July.

Across the forward line, the comparisons are no less flattering to City. Inter’s top scorer in 2022-23, with 28 goals, is Lautaro Martinez, a high-class striker, although not so brilliant that, during the World Cup, he was not eclipsed in the hierarchy of the Argentina squad by Julian Alvarez, who does not normally command a place in City’s XI.

So it is through the finalists’ respective squads, Inter second best in almost every position to a lavishly assembled City, made up of players recruited generally at high cost, contracted to be at City for the peak years of their careers and attracted there by the quality of their teammates, the vision of manager Pep Guardiola, and the facilities that, under the stewardship of their Abu Dhabi owners, have set new standards of excellence.

They are dominant in the most popular domestic league in the world, English champions five times in the past six years. Victory in Istanbul would make them the first Premier League winners of the Champions League-centred treble this century.

So, naturally, City are favourites against Inter’s assorted veterans – Dzeko, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Francesco Acerbi, the spine of the team have a combined age of 106, while cut-price signings Hakan Calhanoglu, goalkeeper Andre Onana, Dzeko and Mkhitaryan all came in for free; Acerbi, like Lukaku, is on loan – and favourites by a vast margin unusual at this stage of club football’s most prestigious competition.

Inter and Man City champions League training

Not even history – Inter have been European club champions three times, most recently in the Treble-winning 2009-10 season – is an alibi, even in a Cup that resists having new names etched on it. The last club to take home the trophy for the first time in their history were Chelsea, in 2012. They won it a second time in 2021, when City had travelled to Porto as favourites to win that all-English final.

In the back of the mind, acting as a stimulant to Inter, is that hinterland, the long saga of City’s tripping up in the late stages of European campaigns when, with Guardiola in charge and the likes of Kevin De Bruyne, John Stones and Ilkay Gundogan growing into peerless performers in their positions under his watch, they failed, again and again, at key moments.

Those moments include the vanishing lead at Real Madrid at the very tail-end of last year’s semi-final; the off-key midfield selection against Chelsea; the ambushes by French underdogs Monaco and Lyon; the upending of the domestic order when City were knocked out by Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur.

After one final and two semi-finals in the past seven years, the most coveted of all club prizes is long overdue.

“We must accept that if we want to make a definitive step as a big club, we must win in Europe,” admits Guardiola. “We have to win the Champions League. That’s something you can’t avoid.”