SOCCER/Barcelona (1) Inter Milan (3):AFTER INTERNAZIONALE had astonished the football world by pummelling Barcelona 3-1 in San Siro last week, a calm Jose Mourinho pronounced that his team's chances of reaching the Champions League final had not changed.
“They are still 50-50,” he said.
“We deserved this victory, but we’re a long way from the final. In the second leg in Barcelona we’ll be playing against a team who will be even stronger. Whether we get to the final or not, we’ll come home with our heads held very, very high.”
A little higher, however, should they succeed, for that would put Mourinho on course for a triple crown – the European Cup, the Serie A title and the Coppa Italia – unprecedented in the club’s history. It eluded even Helenio Herrera, the greatest of his predecessors, who won the first two trophies in 1964-’65 but lost to Juventus in the final of the cup.
Herrera’s team is still known as Il Grande Inter, and should Mourinho triumph in the Bernabeu on May 22nd, having fended off the challenge of Roma both in the final of the cup and in the league (his team are two points ahead with three games to play), the current squad will surely become the Grandissimi.
Josep Guardiola, his opposite number at Camp Nou tonight, did even better last season, winning all six competitions for which Barcelona were eligible, in his first season in charge. Bursting with talent and imagination, his side cruise through their victories as if the players have casters rather than studs on their boots. Mourinho, however, gave them such a shock in the first leg that the return represents a major test of Guardiola’s acumen.
How had Inter kept Lionel Messi and Xavi Hernandez so quiet in Milan? “Everybody was waiting for a surprise,” Mourinho said afterwards, “but sometimes the surprise is that there is no surprise. We changed absolutely nothing. The squad needed a message of faith.”
Inter pressed Barcelona all over the pitch and managed to stop Messi making the sort of slalom runs that have brought him so many goals and awards this season. They were always alert for the chance of a counter-attack, and made effective use of the power and aggression of Diego Milito, their Argentinian centre forward, flanked by Samuel Eto’o and Goran Pandev.
Eto’o, who scored for Barcelona in their Champions League final wins against Arsenal and Manchester United in 2006 and 2009, was used as the makeweight in last summer’s transfer of Zlatan Ibrahimovic to Camp Nou, and Mourinho seems to have got the better of a deal that also saw €46 million transferred from Catalonia to Lombardy. Ibrahimovic scored twice against Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium in the quarter-final, but the languid Swedish international was virtually invisible in Milan after failing to convert an early chance, and he is one player from whom Guardiola will certainly be expecting a greater contribution this evening.
Mourinho expects to have Wesley Sneijder, his key signing from Real Madrid last summer, in the startling line-up following treatment for a muscle strain which forced his withdrawal at half-time in Saturday’s 3-1 win over Atalanta.
Barcelona will be missing Andres Iniesta through injury, while the suspension of Carles Puyol, their captain, means that Inter’s Milito will almost certainly be up against his younger sibling, Gabriel. The brothers last faced each other eight years ago in a Buenos Aires derby when they played for Racing Club and Independiente respectively.
A feeling that nothing is beyond Guardiola’s ensemble of artists is balanced by the knowledge of Mourinho’s approach to matches of such intensity. Inter’s players have been as lavish in their praise of his detailed preparations as Chelsea’s once were, and on his return to a club where he worked from 1996 to 2000 under Bobby Robson and Louis van Gaal he will be particularly keen to confirm his prowess.
The 83,000 Barca fans in the stadium tonight have been urged by Xavi to render the visitors’ lives even more uncomfortable than usual. “For 90 minutes, I hope the atmosphere makes the Inter players hate their profession – but without violence or provocation,”
