Manchester City and Inter Milan will play in the Champions League final on Saturday 10th June in Istanbul. While City was expected to be the protagonist of this competition, Inter surprised everyone, first by eliminating Barcelona in the group, then exploiting the advantage of a benign draw. The result is that the Nerazzurri will have the chance to win their fourth European Cup / Champions League trophy and, for the first time in history, a club with an Asian ownership will win the most prestigious European competition.
Much has been written about Sheikh Mansour and his investments that have brought City into the elite of European football, but in this article I will focus instead on FC Internazionale and its international character, a characteristic that is engraved into its name and its history.
Inter was born on 9 March 1908, when a few members of the already existing Milan, who did not accept the choice not to sign any more foreign players in the squad, decided to start a new club. They called it Internazionale (i.e., International in Italian), with the motivation that “we are brothers of the world”.
The Players
In its history, Inter stayed true to this statement, now updated to “brothers and sisters of the world”, and they had players from all continents, starting with its first captain, the Swiss Hernst Marktl. Speaking of captains, one cannot fail to mention the current vice-president of the club, the Argentinean Javier Zanetti, who is the player with the most appearances in the history of Inter.
Another Argentianian was Antonio Angelillo, the footballer who scored the most goals in a single season for Inter, he played for the Italian national team as well as for the Albiceleste one. The strong bond between Inter and Argentina can also be found in the four Argentines in the squad at the time of the 2010 treble, namely Walter Samuel, Esteban Cambiasso and Diego Milito (who scored two goals in the Champions League final against Bayern Munich), as well as the already mentioned Zanetti. More recently, Mauro Icardi broke into the club’s top 10 goalscorers, and world champion Lautaro Martinez may join this elite group soon.
Argentinians aren’t the only South American talents in Inter’s history. Take Brazil for example, Jair was part of the Inter side that won two European Cups and two Intercontinental Cups in the 1960s, Adriano Leite Ribeiro enchanted Inter supporters with his left foot in the early 2000s, while Julio Cesar, Lucio, Maicon and Thiago Motta won the Champions League in 2010. Among the Brazilians, one cannot fail to mention the “fenomeno” Ronaldo Luís Nazário de Lima, who played for Inter between 1997 and 2002. In the same years, other Latin-American players, like the Chilean Ivan Zamorano, and the Uruguayan Alvaro Recoba, played with Inter and contributed to the victory of the 1998 UEFA Cup.
Inter’s xenophilia is not limited to South American players. Among the many Europeans who have played in the Club one must mention the Spanish Luis Suárez, Jair’s teammate in the great Inter of the sixties, the German trio Lothar Matthäus, Andreas Brehme and Jurgen Klinsmann of the late eighties / early nineties, the French Youri Djorkaeff, whose bicycle kick against Roma ended up as background picture on the season ticket, up to the protagonists of the Inter victories in the 21st Century. This list cannot be comprehensive, but must include the late Sinisa Mihajlovic, Luis Figo, Patrick Vieira and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who brought the Club back to lift trophies under Roberto Mancini, passing through the 2010 treble winners Dejan Stankovic, Wesley Sneijder, Goran Pandev and Christian Chivu (now coach of the club’s youth team), to the “scudettati” of the 2020-21 season, such as the Croatian Ivan Perisic and Marcelo Brozovic, the Belgian Romelu Lukaku, the Danish Christian Eriksen, and the Slovenian captain Samir Handanovic.
One of the key protagonists of the 2010 treble was Samuel Eto’o, a Cameroonian like current goalkeeper André Onana. The Ghanaian Sulley Muntari and the Kenian McDonald Mariga were also part of the 2010 squad, although they usually started as subs. Among the African players in Inter’s history, there have been 8 Nigerians, including Nwankwo Kanu, whom Inter supported when he discovered he had congenital heart disease, and the future pastor Taribo West, who later played for AC Milan as well.
Finally, this brief roundup of Inter’s foreign players cannot be concluded without mentioning Yuto Nagatomo, the club’s first Japanese player, and the Australian meteor Trent Sainsbury, who was briefly at Inter in between his experiences in the other club then owned by Suning group, the Jangsu.
Before moving on to the foreign coaches who have made Inter’s history, some data can help to understand the club’s international leanings. When Felipe Caicedo joined Inter in January 2022, the club stated that the arrival of the Ecuadorian brought the number of different nationalities to represent the club to 50. And, perhaps most surprising of all, since the 1982 World Cup in Spain, there has always been at least one Inter player in the final of every World Cup.
The Coaches
Bob Spottiswood, born in Carlisle, was the first professional coach in the history of Inter – history in which the Hungarian of Jewish origin, Arpad Weisz, also played a very important role, which led to the victory of the Scudetto in the 1929-30 season. After winning two more Italian championships at the helm of Bologna, Weisz left Italy following the approval of the racial laws in 1938, and died with his family in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
From the post-war period to today, the two most iconic coaches of Inter are the ones who led the Nerazzurri to win two European Cups in the 1960s, and the Champions League in 2010, namely the Argentinian Helenio Herrera and the Portuguese Jose Mourinho. Both had already won trophies in other countries, they were brought to Inter respectively by Angelo and Massimo Moratti. But the similarities don’t end there, because both Herrera and Mourinho, in their different historical contexts, have gone down in history as great communicators and motivators, meticulous in preparing matches, and supporters of more defensive than offensive football. The last foreign coach of Inter was Frank De Boer, chosen by the then President Erick Thohir, he was sacked after only 14 games, of which 7 were defeats.
The Presidents
Indonesian Erick Thohir reached an agreement with Massimo Moratti to buy 70% of Inter’s shares in autumn 2013 and became the club’s first foreign president. It was a profound cultural and managerial change for Inter, accustomed to family management and the constant presence of the “fan” Moratti. Thohir’s years did not bring any trophies or Champions League qualifications, partly due to the restrictions due to the new rules of financial fair play, but laid the foundations for the transition to a new foreign ownership, this time Chinese.
Suning Holdings Group bought 68.55% of Inter in June 2016. Thohir remained president until 26 October 2018, when Steven Zhang, son of Suning founder Jindong Zhang, became the youngest president in Nerazzurri history at the age of just 26. Of the club’s long history, the new ownership liked to recall the tour in China in June 1978, when Inter became the first Italian team to visit China, less than two years after the death of Mao Zedong.
Under Zhang’s presidency, Inter have returned steadily to the Champions League since 2018, reached the Europa League final in 2020 and won its nineteenth Italian championship with Antonio Conte in 2021. In the meantime, however, Covid, the slowdown of the Chinese economy and the change in the approach of the Chinese leadership towards investment in football had an impact on Inter’s finances. As a consequence, the management resolved to sell some key players, such as Achraf Hakimi to PSG and Lukaku to Chelsea, and rely on free transfers and loans, including the return of Lukaku himself.
Despite this, the team remained competitive and unexpectedly reached the Champions League final in Istanbul, while rumours about a future change of ownership continue, alternatively citing European, American or Asian investors and funds.
In a way or another, Inter’s future will remain international.