Inter - Roma (29 Oct 23) [1-0]

[wera]

Congrats being at least 2 years too late to the party. If you needed the Inter - Roma game to finally get Lukaku isn't all up there mentally...

 

[CafeCordoba]

That pic is not from yesterday.

Don't believe everything you find from Internet.

Look at that picture, you see that Irriducibili ultra group banner? There is no such group in Curva Nord anymore. AFAIK the group is alive but all the ultra groups are united as Curva Nord Milano 1969 when they are in Curva Nord (in Meazza). Thus, that is some old pic.

Okay lol, this was FAKE NEWS!

They have their group banners still in the stadium.

 

[Glass box]

Love Mou but he should give up on club career after Roma. The quality of his team play is so low that is hard to watch.

I mean they were our opponents and I was actually feeling ashamed of their lack of effort/ideas getting forward. I can't see how Roma fans don't complain more.

He won Roma a trophy after 14 years and played a final in the Europa league his second season. I think their fans won't care if they finish 7th anyway but play more attacking football, which is what will happen after he goes and what it was before he arrived. With Mourinho at least there's always the possibility of winning some trophy.

 

[delaurentis]

This could have been easily a 3-0 win.


All papers seem to agree:

Roma striker Romelu Lukaku was the worst player on the pitch against Inter, according to La Gazzetta dello Sport and other Italian sports papers: ‘He got everything wrong.’

This only proves Lukaku`s fragile mentality. So glad that Inter didn`t splash 40M on him!

Since lakaka struggles mostly against quality opposition, I think it's therefore safe to say that Inter are a team of quality.

 

[PHM1605]

This Roma also beat Empoli 7 - 0. Roma is the Bayern of Serie A. Serie A joke of a league. Shut it down, shut it all down!

This Roma is only as good as it is because of Mourinho. Pretty much a typical Mou performance against, we just have more quality. Pretty sure Fiorentina and Sassuolo have a better roster than Roma this season.

I still see Roma have better strikers depth (*not starters) than us. Maybe behind Juve's only.

Just see how amazing Sarri is. Not a single one from his squad after SMS I would pick for Inter.

 

[KDog]

Okay lol, this was FAKE NEWS!

They have their group banners still in the stadium.

yea i researched a bit first. someone said the picture is from 2013 but you can see the new crest on some fans and there have been several reports of people that saw them in the stadium - still mad about this shit.

 

[#NotForMe]

How do we know banana is not Lukaku's favorite fruit?

Yea I love banana and I am not black, they help me to take a good shit.

 

[CafeCordoba]

Stop this talk about bananas.

 

[NimAraya]

Stop this talk about bananas.

Stop going banana.

 

[Provenzano]

 

[Pravesh]

From what I've seen Roma players were complaining about why Thuram took the ball and kicked it in the air after the final whistle. Nothing serious really. Happen at the heat of the game.

I had the same thought when I watched it first time. Then, I felt like why would Roma players complain for that. When I watched it again, I felt like Thuram was shouting in front of the opponent player in excitement.

Should not do that next time - if he did so.

We should have won this game by few more goals and not in the 81st minute. Thankfully, we did get the 3pts.

 

[Puma]

Closure for Inter – Lukaku is gone and they are the class of Serie A​

By James Horncastle
Oct 30, 2023

The unboxing happened outside the Baretto.

The scotch tape came off, the ultras reached inside and handed out the whistles. They had ordered 30,000 and told their members and casual Inter Milan fans to come and collect them outside the bar underneath the rippling concrete tiers of the Curva Nord of San Siro.

Milan’s police precinct had tried to put a stop to it after Roma cited article 62 of the Italian Football Federation’s rulebook. The whistles — black and plastic with a necklace — were considered a risk to public order. Anyone found with one risked a fine of €22 (£19; $23).

But the supporters in line for a fischietto didn’t care. They queued up for them anyway. If the stewards at the turnstiles confiscated their whistle, so be it. If not, there was a workaround. The most downloaded app in Italy on Sunday was Fischietto per lo sport e SOS. Activate it on iPhone or Android and it would make the desired shrill sound. No whistle necessary.

The ultras in the Nord wanted every touch made by Romelu Lukaku to be greeted with a deafening, off-putting eagle cry. “Milan is waiting for you,” a banner strewn across one of the city’s bridges promised.

They had not been surprised by Lukaku’s decision to ghost Inter over the summer. He left amid a storm in 2021, jumping ship to Chelsea as the club he claimed to love hit choppy financial waters. His return on loan a year later was met with indifference by the Inter hardcore who recommended no one go to the airport to welcome him back. “Those who betray you will do so again not because they take enjoyment from it but because it is in their nature,” a communique read.

Nevertheless, Inter’s executive team were left embittered by Lukaku after attempts to sign him on a permanent basis a second time around failed this summer. Lukaku, so the apocryphal Inter version goes, went silent on the club after they lodged a bid with Chelsea. By the time they got hold of him, it had emerged his entourage had been talking with Inter’s rivals, Juventus and Milan. In the space of the briefest of conversations, Piero Ausilio, Inter’s sporting director — who likes to remind people he’s from Cinisello, one of Milan’s toughest suburbs — told Lukaku he should be ashamed of himself and hung up.

The Belgian striker has never offered a rebuttal to the Inter narrative other than to hint during the last international break that everything is not how it seems. “I don’t talk much off the pitch,” he said. “It’s not my style. I prefer to speak on it. But there are times when I think it’d be a good idea to tell people what happened and what didn’t happen. I think I’ll do it one day.”

The sooner he does the better because, frankly, it makes little sense why he would turn down a Champions League finalist to play, at age 30, for a team outside the Champions League places in Italy.

Lukaku returned to Italy not with Inter, nor with Juventus, but with Roma, after the Friedkins and general manager Tiago Pinto spent the final days of the transfer window trying to align his salary and loan fee with the club’s financial fair play (FFP) settlement agreement — an equation J Robert Oppenheimer would need a lakeside chat with Albert Einstein to figure out.

Concerns about his lack of match fitness were allayed. Not by Lukaku’s Instagram supercut — Oscar-worthy in itself — of his workouts in Sardinia, but by his relatively instant impact on the pitch. His goal-per-game ratio at Roma is a personal best in Italy, better even than the MVP year in which his performances were so dominant Inter won their last league title and Chelsea paid €113million to re-sign him.

His eight goals in 10 appearances helped Roma turn their season around. Only against Torino did they fail to win when Lukaku’s name flashed up in lights on the scoreboard.

Five straight victories against teams promoted this year or last, some reduced to 10 men, others from the Europa League, made people think: might Lukaku on his own be enough to upset his old side, who, by general consensus, have been tipped as the favourites for the Scudetto this season? Roma’s coach Jose Mourinho tried to downplay such a scenario with exaggeration — “Inter should win the league by 20 points” — and, maybe, an unwillingness to offend the only fanbase that loves him more than that of his current club.

He also, perhaps unintentionally, diminished Lukaku, the striker he pressured his owners and general manager to deliver. Mourinho claimed, unconvincingly, that he did not understand the hostility of his old club towards Lukaku.


“I didn’t know he was that important in Milan,” he said. “Because what he did there — winning a league title, a cup and the Super Cup — is something 200 Inter players have done… (The drama around) Romelu to Roma is a surprise because I didn’t think Inter fans had taken him so much to heart.”

One guesses Mourinho never saw the murals of Lukaku and Zlatan Ibrahimovic — the King of Milan versus God — on the road to San Siro. The King who abdicated, Inter’s own Edward VIII.

The break-up never sat well with the other component of the famous LuLa strike partnership, Lautaro Martinez, who became captain of Inter in the summer.

“I also tried to call him in those chaotic days,” Lautaro said. “He never got back to me. Other team-mates tried. After all we’ve been through together, I was disappointed. It’s his choice. In the meantime, I wish him all the best.”

But when the teams crossed paths and shook hands before kick-off on Sunday, Lautaro could barely look at Lukaku, a friend turned foe.

The whistles were first tested out when Lukaku ran out for the warm-up. DAZN’s pundits, pitchside, could barely hear each other think as fans pursed the whistles to their lips and blew with all their lung capacity, which remains considerable despite the smoking habit of the average San Siro season-ticket holder.

Defiantly, Lukaku stood on his own in the centre circle to kick the game off. He had spent the preceding minutes telling Rasmus Kristensen where to cross and passing on advice to Roma’s centre-back Evan N’Dicka about Lautaro’s tendencies. Already in double figures, the Argentine is Serie A’s top scorer and deserving of the Ballon d’Or, according to his coach Simone Inzaghi.

Watching Lukaku’s focus in the build-up to the game, one wondered if he might be able to channel the original Ronaldo in March 2007, when the Brazilian overcame the whistles of the Nord and scored against his old club. Back then, the ultras also handed out 30,000 fischietti to no avail. He temporarily silenced them by angling a shot past his compatriot Julio Cesar only for Inter to come back and win thanks to goals from Julio Cruz and Zlatan, who memorably couldn’t stop gawping at his idol before kick-off.

But for Lukaku, it wasn’t to be.

When the game started, the Interisti had little chance to whistle him. Roma had two touches in the opposition penalty area all game. They didn’t have a single shot in the first half and their best chance fell to Bryan Cristante.

Inter hit the bar through Hakan Calhanoglu, then the upright through substitute Carlos Augusto and won the game thanks to Lukaku’s replacement, the majestic Marcus Thuram.

Arguably the signing of the season in Serie A, the freebie from Borussia Monchengladbach left his mark again under the doting gaze of his father, Lilian. While less spectacular than his goal in the Derby della Madonnina, a 5-1 win over AC Milan, this close-range finish, Thuram’s ninth goal-involvement in 10 league games, sent Inter back to the top of the table.

“I’m only interested in scoring and winning,” the France international said. Succeeding Lukaku? Not so much.

For him and Roma, the full-time whistle came as a relief. Cristante took up the role of spokesperson for the suspended Mourinho, arguing that a team that played on Thursday and a bench, adroitly put together by Pinto, with Houssem Aouar, Andrea Belotti, Sardar Azmoun and Rick Karsdorp couldn’t compete.

As for Inter fans, Sunday night represented closure. Big Rom is gone and it won’t be long before they can whistle another tune.

While it is still early days, this team is going to take some catching. Inter are the class of Serie A.

 

[Fitzy]

Good ol' Mr Horncastle. I remember him being genuinely interested when Del Piero came over to the A-League.

 

[pupivn]

He’s ok, his dramatic romanticised style is not my cup of tea tbh.

 

[ADRossi]

He’s ok, his dramatic romanticised style is not my cup of tea tbh.

He's catering to his audience.

 

[Fitzy]

I like the idea of romanticism with football. Tends to explain why we're all here on this forum.

 

[Fitzy]

Tend

Btw, I like this word.

 

[ADRossi]

Btw, I like this word.

I tend to agree.

 

[Universe]

I like the idea of romanticism with football. Tends to explain why we're all here on this forum.

 

[delaurentis]

Closure for Inter – Lukaku is gone and they are the class of Serie A​

The Belgian striker has never offered a rebuttal to the Inter narrative other than to hint during the last international break that everything is not how it seems. “I don’t talk much off the pitch,” he said. “It’s not my style. I prefer to speak on it. But there are times when I think it’d be a good idea to tell people what happened and what didn’t happen. I think I’ll do it one day.”