Inter Milan Shatters Records With Italian Super Cup Win Over Napoli

It was always meant to be him. Lautaro Martinez swept in Benjamin Pavard’s assist to win Inter Milan their third consecutive Italian Super Cup. The Nerazzurri captain’s 21st goal of the season was enough to beat Napoli in Riyadh, clinching the first of three possible trophies as coach Simone Inzaghi charges towards the 2023-24 Serie A title and launches another assault on the UEFA EFA Champions League.

Chaos reigned at Al-Awaal Park as Napoli’s Geovanni Simeone was sent from the field with half an hour remaining, cautioned for a second time after fouling Francesco Acerbi. With the game in the balance, and with Inter laying siege, Martinez finally found himself unmarked in front of Pierluigi Gollini’s goal with enough space to thrash in the 91st-minute killer blow. The Argentine joins Samuel Eto’o, Andriy Shevchenko, Carlos Tevez and Alessandro Del Piero as the joint second-highest goalscorer (3) in Super Cup history, one behind Paolo Dybala.

The ‘Simone Inzaghi Cup’

With victory, Inzaghi has overtaken Fabio Capello and Marcello Lippi, two legends of Italian football, for Supercoppa wins. Including his coaching spell with Lazio, the 47-year-old has taken five of the past seven titles. Inzaghi also set another record by winning his fifth final at Inter, overtaking Helenio Herrera and Roberto Mancini, who both received four.

“There are no secrets really, you need a great team, which I have at Inter and had before with Lazio,” Inzaghi told Mediaset. “I was optimistic, but only to a certain degree, because usually you have a week or more to prepare for a Final and we didn’t have that here.”

A former striker best known for scoring 70 goals in Serie A, Inzaghi was part of the title-winning Lazio squad, led by Sven-Göran Eriksson, that defeated Marcello Lippi’s Inter 4-3 in the 2000 Super Cup Final. Following his retirement in 2010, he then returned to the Biancocelesti in a managerial capacity in 2016 and seized his first two Super Cups in 2017 and 2019 with success over Juventus on both occasions.

With Antonio Conte walking away in 2021, Inzaghi signed on at the Beneamata and has taken all three Super Cups on offer since, matching AC Milan’s record set between 1992 and 1994. With the three-peat, Inter secured its eighth title to climb ahead of the Rossoneri (7) but remain one behind Juventus.

Controversy in Saudi Arabia

Referee Antonio Rapuano came under fire in the first half when Inter’s Hakan Calhanoglu escaped multiple yellow cards, enraging Napoli captain Giovanni Di Lorenzo and his boss, Walter Mazzarri, in the dugout. After the break, with Napoli growing into the game, Rapuano showed Simeone two yellow cards within minutes of each other. From there, the contest descended into cat and mouse as Inter stretched Di Lorenzo’s defences. Following the agonising loss, where yellow and red cards carry over into the Serie A season, Mazzarri refused to attend the post-match press conference. His club president Aurelio De Laurentiis stepped in.

“The inadequacy of the referees this year speaks for itself,” De Laurentiis explained to Corriere dello Sport. “We were here to promote our football and put on a show, but if you leave me with ten men there is no show. Furthermore, yellow cards and expulsions will be paid in the championship, a further distortion.”

The movie mogul has regularly criticised the Italian authorities and has never been shy to show his disapproval whether things go for or against his team.

“The League unfortunately doesn't work, it's its own [worst] enemy. They've also changed the regulations, so we pay for all the various expulsions in the championship.”

Following his team’s 3-0 thrashing of Fiorentina in the semi-final, De Laurentiis offered bonus incentives to his players as a way to inspire his men to an unlikely Final win - the club’s best chance for silverware in 2023-24. With $8.73M awarded in prize money to the winner, enough for De Laurentiis to pay Antonio Conte for next season, Napoli was denied an extra $3.27M by losing on Monday, instead banking $5.46M as runners-up. And after two straight victories against Salernitana and the Viola, this was Napoli’s best opportunity to win three consecutive games since the Luciano Spalletti days of March 2023.

Spalletti, who in 2018 led Inter back to Champions League football for the first time in six years, and later helped Napoli to their third Scudetto in 2023, was in Riyadh to monitor national team prospects in preparation for his Italy side’s Euro 2024 defence. Meanwhile, predecessor Roberto Mancini, who left the Azzurri in August for the Saudi Arabian job, remained in Qatar where he is overseeing the Green Falcons at the AFC Asian Cup.

Over the past decade, Inter and Napoli have excelled rapidly, often intertwining with top managers like Spalletti, Mazzarri and Rafa Benitez flicking between the two clubs. Due to Napoli’s steady rise - having finished in the top four of Serie A on seven different occasions - the likes of former Inter coach Conte are more likely to negotiate with De Laurentiis who is recognised for his shrewd business acumen.

Serie A

For now, interim coach Mazzarri can take credit for Napoli’s revitalised competitive spirit. With this weekend’s six-pointer with Lazio in plain sight, and then a trip north at third-placed Milan, the question mark hovers over whether he will stick by his experimental 3-4-2-1 formation. Victor Osimhen and Frank Anguissa could be back in time but it all hinges on their respective AFCON (Africa Cup of Nations) obligations with Nigeria and Cameroon.

In regards to the title race, Inzaghi, who was nominated for last week’s Best FIFA Awards in London, has days before the all-important trip to Florence. One week later, there’s the mouthwatering clash with Juventus who leapfrogged the winter champions into first place in Serie A on Sunday. With Italy’s two biggest clubs going head to head for the Scudetto, expect another Derby d’Italia in next season’s Super Cup Final where Inter could equal Juve’s all-time record.