INTER MILAN CLAIMED their eighth Italian Cup on Wednesday after overcoming old foes Juventus 4-2 in an extra-time victory full of incident and controversy.
Ivan Perisic secured a thrilling win with a double in the first half of extra time but the match hung on the awarding of a soft-seeming penalty which Hakan Calhanoglu smashed in to take the match past 90 minutes.
Juve had been deservedly leading through quickfire goals from Alex Sandro and Dusan Vlahovic early in the second half and referee Paolo Valeri’s decision to give the spot-kick after Lautaro Martinez fell following a slight touch from Leonardo Bonucci enraged Juve.
For Inter it is another success over Juve after winning the Italian Super Cup earlier in the season and will boost them in their Serie A title defence.
🎉🏆 HANDS ON THE TROPHY! 🏆🎉
— Premier Sports (@PremierSportsTV) May 11, 2022
Inter are your Coppa Italia winners for 2021-22 🔵⚫ pic.twitter.com/X4kB9gnfSH
Inter trail AC Milan by two points and could hand their local rivals the Scudetto if they don’t beat relegation-threatened Cagliari on Sunday.
Nicolo Barella gave Inter the lead in the sixth minute with a long-range effort which would soon be forgotten amid the controversy to come.
His thumping strike came after a blistering start from Inter which threatened to blow Juve away, the Italy international collecting after a corner was cleared, cutting in side and unleashing a curling effort which Mattia Perin didn’t even bother trying to stop.
However from then on Juve were the better team and should have gone in at the break at least level, if not ahead.
Paulo Dybala was the first to offer signs of life in the 23rd minute when his low shot was comfortably saved.
Moments later the Argentine fed Vlahovic whose powerful, angled drive needed smart reactions from Samir Handanovic to be kept out.
Matthijs de Ligt had a header well saved on the half-hour mark and it looked for all the world that Dybala would bag a deserved leveller when the subsequent corner fell kindly to him, but he sliced his first-time strike wide.
Juve soon turned the match on its head though, with Sandro levelling the scores five minutes after the break when his shot slipped through Handanovic’s hands as Alvaro Morata tried to deflect the ball.
The Juve fans were jumping and their end of the ground exploded with joy seconds later, Vlahovic ending a four-match dry spell in front of goal after being sent flying through on goal by Dybala.
The Serbia forward sent Danilo D’Ambrosio packing and although his first effort was kept out, he made no mistake on the rebound.
Juve looked to have the game under control until referee Valeri handed Inter an ill-deserved lifeline.
Calhanoglu rifled home from the spot and an already fired-up Juve team then lost control when De Ligt was ruled after a VAR check to have chopped down Stefan de Vrij.
Perisic stepped up to smashed in the penalty in the 98th minute and once the Croat’s decisive second flew in from distance there was chaos, with Massimiliano Allegri sent off and players and officials tussling on the sidelines.
However Juve couldn’t launch a fightback and Inter took the honours with the league season climax around the corner.
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Heysel hurt Everton more than any other English club. Denied their greatest side a chance to compete in Europe.
@@TJPPK: you are right but i think as a whole England tried (and succeed ) after hysel and Hillsborough.
@@TJPPK: as an Everton fan I can tell ya that damage is still felt at the club today to an extent. We aren’t bitter about it in the slightest but sometimes ya can’t help but wonder what could have been if it wasn’t for a bunch of hooligans that night, not just for Everton but for all English sides after that
@@TJPPK: Not really. If the tragedy hasn’t happened, Liverpool would have won that game; both Liverpool and Everton would have been in the European Cup. Liverpool suffered too.
@Ian Heaton: they lost the game if memory serves me right, what makes you think without tragedy they would’ve won it?? Jive great side then..
@Philip Mckenna: They lost 1-0 to a penalty that wasn’t, which was to possibly appease the Juve fans. Liverpool couldn’t exactly go out and try to win the game after what had happened. We had a great side too, and we were defending European champions.
I remember watching that game in my teens, shocking shocking scenes, as a Liverpool supporter myself and everyone at the time expected some sort of violence but what unfolded was surreal, the bodies on the field both captains trying to calm the fans before the game resumed, the subsequent inquiry about the state of the stadium, how opposing sets of fans occupying places in the neutral zone, but most of all the dead and injured fans who in the main went out to watch what should have been a great game of ball, and not least the disappointment and disbelief that a section of the Liverpool support caused the mayhem, I recall telling my uncle at the time “this is not why I support Liverpool” coz fu@k it people all them poor souls just went to watch a game of ball and never made it home.
Really interesting read, well done
More likely should be called 2 classes of supporters. 1 the normal decent supporters, 2 the thugs. And most people will remember those thugs ringleaders were from upper class bankers,office workers and other financial institutions looking for kicks total animals
These articles care superb reads lads. Love them!
The night it happened, I was 13 years old and I decided to never have anything to do with that game ever again.
Haven’t watched another soccer match since.
Some mullets in those days
The way in which thatcher is vilified in articles like this is getting tedious. Granted, she wasn’t universally popular and her record in Ireland is appalling, but you would think sometimes that she was a tinpot dictator like Putin rather than a democratically elected leader who comfortably won three elections in a row. If she represented the minority, why did a majority back her? Are all British voters essentially fascist? Or did they remember the utter disasters of a union dominated labour administration? Could it be that a significant number of the sainted working class actually supported her? No, surely not.
@Cathal O’Donoghue: Try being a Scouser living under her regime. There was wishes to run the city down to nothing.
Where’s the comments gone lads? I thought I was having a reasonable conversation with another poster don’t let the kids take over the asylum.
@Dae Monicus: i think its gone to a stage of just cutting the whole thread?
@Stephen Coveney: So much for unhateful free speech Stephen, cheers for the heads up squire.
@Dae Monicus: all my comments were removed. I posted nothing offensive. Journal is a joke. China has more press freedom.
@kevin: I couldn’t agree more Kevin but at the time all clubs had somewhat of an hooligan element and I can’t condone that, however not the clubs as such but those whos fans, patrticuary those with a strong Irish connection ie Liverpool, Utd, Birmingham, Everton did face a lot of bias to be fair and again it doesn’t justify what happened at games it was just a reflection of the times.
60k a year 3 times the average wage???? 20k was the average wage in mid 80’s really??? Apart from that good read