after winning their first scudetto – (literally, ‘little shield’) – in 1910, Inter’s first captain Virgilio Fossati was himself later to fall victim to the nationalistic carnage of World War I. Meanwhile, the design of the club crest produced by those early artistic founders is today ridiculed by Interisti as illegible.
Italian football fans are notoriously superstitious. And the birth of Inter produced what must be one of the most eerie ghosts at any football feast. Barbara Ballardini, 29, who compiled an entire academic thesis on the fans of Inter and Milan, explains: ‘Historically, AC Milan have experienced lots of ups and downs, with long periods without winning anything. Before the schism that created Inter they had already won three scudetti with the latest coming the year before the breakaway. But then they entered their longest ever barren period. AC Milan had to wait another forty-four years before they won their next scudetto. And that inaugural Inter meeting was attended by forty-four founding members.’ Woo, spooky.
For many years the Internazionale splitters were dismissed as a bunch of upper class intellectuals, while AC Milan remained associated more with the working classes. Indeed, Milanese dialect gave early nicknames of Casciavit for Milan and Bauscia for Inter – roughly translated as ‘spanners’ and ‘braggers’. But, these original socio-economic differences are now well outdated. A recent survey also found little difference between the fans’ political affiliations, with the traditionally left-leaning Milan fans shifting towards the centre since the arrival in 1986 of club president Silvio Berlusconi, the media billionaire and current Prime Minister of Italy’s centre-right governing coalition. Like the rest of Italy, club nicknames derive from team colours, hence nerazzurri (black-blues) for Inter, and rossoneri for Milan’s red-and-black.
The very first meeting of the two Milan formations was, perhaps uniquely in the history of footballing derbies, not actually staged in the home city – nor even in the country. The two sides came head to head on a football pitch for the first time in Chiasso, some fifty miles north of Milan just over the border in Switzerland. ‘Nobody really knows why,’ admits Fabio Monti. And if the affable Monti doesn’t know, you suspect nobody does.
The result of the match, reported at the time as a ‘Chiasso Cup’ tie, was a 2–1 victory for the Milan Football and Cricket Club. Goalscorer Lana, Milan’s number seven, went on to score the Italian national side’s first ever goal two years later.
The renegade Inter’s early history was peripatetic, shifting from one location to another until 1930 when they settled at the roofless Arena stadium just outside the city’s inner ring of ancient gates which date back before Napoleon. Evocative of an ancient Roman amphitheatre, the Arena still hosts Serie D games.
Meanwhile Milan, with the big money backing of the Pirelli tyre-manufacturing family – nowadays one of Inter’s main sponsors – built a stadium on the then city periphery, in the San Siro area, in 1926. They sold it to the city authorities in 1935. An enlarged version was inaugurated in 1939 with a 2–2 draw against England in a friendly international just four months before the outbreak of World War II. In Italy, not even global conflagrations tend to stop football matches, and the following year Inter obtained permission to shift their title-winning end-of-season fixture against Bologna to the larger San Siro to accommodate the crowds.
The odd couple were back living under the same roof. Or at least Inter had cheekily brought its toothbrush to stay the night. The domestic arrangement was to be made permanent from 1947.
‘Yes, it’s a peculiar history,’ admits Barbara Ballardini, the thesis-writing rossoneri. ‘Two huge teams with huge fan bases that share the same ground and don’t really have any strong ties to any particular part of the city. They are devoid of religious or political rivalries, save for the ’70s when some ultra groupings reflected the violent political environment in Italy at the time.’
But one of the most curious features of Milanese footballing culture is that nobody can explain why they chose one team or the other. ‘As a little girl I just always liked wearing red. I’d dress up as a Milanista at carnival,’ laughs Barbara Ballardini. It’s about as good a response as you get. When asked by a sociological survey why they chose Inter, one third quoted family allegiance. Yet an astonishing 18 per cent said they couldn’t remember. Thirty-five year-old financial advisor Andrea di Cola is an Inter season-ticket holder: ‘When I was a kid they were a legendary club. Now, even though we haven’t won anything for years, I like the fans. They are notoriously critical, yes, but there is a lot of self-irony in it all. It’s good fun.’
The derby’s passion on the pitch comes without the surrounding air of menace sometimes associated with such confrontations. ‘There certainly isn’t the aggression that you get back home,’ says Linda McCanna, a 30-year-old Manchester United fan from Cheshire now living in Italy with Massimo, her AC Milan season ticket-holding boyfriend. ‘If a City fan – or a Liverpool fan, for that matter – wandered into a United pub they’d be likely to find a bit of bother, especially on a matchday. Here, they sing songs against each other at the match, but then afterwards they’re in the bar sharing a drink. They know each other, work in the same places, live in the same areas.’
Perhaps surprisingly, the absence of violence also derives from the network of ultras. ‘There did used to be trouble between the opposing ultras,’ Barbara Ballardini explains. ‘But back in 1983, when a particularly nasty derby confrontation outside the San Siro got out of hand – an Inter fan died – the ultra leaders got together and agreed a kind of non-belligerence pact between themselves.’ It has held to this day.
‘I’d say, if anything, Milan fans dislike Inter more than they dislike us,’ admits Max, a rossoneri season ticket-holder. ‘We have to share “our” stadium with them, and we’ve won more than they have. The Milan curva sud sings songs against Inter at every game, not only when we are playing against them.’ The chant ‘July and August’ ridicules Interisti pre-season boasting which often comes to nothing by season’s end. Given Inter’s lack of a scudetto since 1989, it hits home. ‘But they seem more bothered about beating Juve,’ says Max. ‘At least that’s what they pretend.’
‘It is true. For Inter the derby is a very important game. But historically, it’s against Juventus that feelings ran highest,’ says no less an authority than Mario Corso, legendary left-winger of the ‘Grande Inter’ side that swept all before them in the early-’60s. Under coach Helenio Herrera, regarded as the inventor of the notorious catenaccio defensive style, Inter won four scudetti, two European Cups, and two Intercontinental Cups.
Corso, who notched up 414 league appearances for Inter, recalls: ‘In ’65 we won 2–0 and overtook Milan to win the league. And I scored. That is a special memory. But against Juve there was an angry feeling, it always felt worse being beaten by Juve. It was almost a derby.’ Indeed the Juventus–Internazionale fixture is classically known as il derby d’Italia, being the only ever-present Serie A fixture and because of the Inter and Juventus supporters clubs spread around the country.
But across town at the Milan club headquarters in Via Turati, Cesare Maldini, whose captaincy included lifting the European Cup at Wembley after defeating Benfica 2–1 in 1963, dismisses any suggestion that Milan’s city derby is anything less than a charged-up affair. ‘No, no, the players really felt it,’ recalls the ex-rossoneri leader, and father of current captain Paolo. ‘The derby was always the most important game – it meant being supreme, for the fans to say they were the top team in the city, for a few months. When Milan won 6–0 a couple of years ago, and at “their place” too,’ he chuckles, ‘it was a terrific shock. It really meant something.’ From his own playing days he can’t pick out one particular derby game, ‘but in those days the winning fans would go out celebrating in the streets, and carry mock funeral wreaths to the other club. Admittedly, you don’t see that any more.’
