The dream of the “Scudetto” no longer exists for Inter and its arch-neighbor Milan, but the holders of the last two titles clung to the lead behind Napoli, with the first victory 3-1 over Udinese and the second with difficulty over its host Monza with a clean goal, in the competitions of the twenty-third stage of the Italian Football League on Saturday. .
Inter took revenge on Udinese, who had surpassed it in the first leg with the same score 3-1 last September, and restored the 15-point difference with leaders Napoli.
Inter owes this victory to the goals of the Belgian Romelu Lukaku (20 from a penalty kick), the Armenian Henrikh Mkhitaryan (73) and the Argentine Lautaro Martinez (89), while the Slovenian Sandy Lovric scored the only Udinese goal (43).
The irony is that Inter’s victory came after losing to the afflicted Sampdoria in the last stage, while Udinese had only won once since the eighth stage, and it was against Sampdoria itself.
With this victory, Inter raised its score to 47 points in second place, while Udinese’s balance stopped at 30 points in ninth place.
Inter started the meeting with a pressing attack, and in the 16th minute the referee awarded a penalty kick to “Nerazzurri” after returning to the video assistant referee “VAR” technique after a mistake on the Dutchman Denzel Damfries.
But the referee ordered the kick to be taken again, and the Belgian hit hard in the same corner and scored this time (20), to score his first goal in the Italian League in 189 days, specifically since August 13, 2022.
While Inter sought to double the score, the surprise came from Udinese, who equalized before the end of the first half from a quick counterattack in which Argentine Roberto Pereira passed a ball to Lovric, who shot from inside the area against Slovenian goalkeeper Samir Handanovic (43).
But the second half smiled at Inter, doubling the score in the 73rd minute, after a cross from Federico Dimarco, which Mkhitaryan completed in the net.
In the 88th minute, Martinez was alone with the goalkeeper and played a ball that fell over the crossbar. However, he made up for the waste with a third goal with a beautiful shot after a minute (89), scoring his 13th goal in the league.
In the “Berlusconi Derby” as it was called, Brazilian Junior Messias scored the only goal of the match in the 31st minute, raising the “Rossoneri” to 44 points in third place, while Monza’s balance froze at 29 points in eleventh place.
This loss is the first for Monza this year, and before Saturday’s match, he achieved a series of eight matches without defeat, but his ambition to win the club that was owned by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was not achieved.
It is true that Monza, which is currently owned by Berlusconi, started the match strongly and threatened Milan’s goal from the first minutes, but the brilliance of Romanian goalkeeper Kyprian Tatarusano prevented goals from being scored.
In the thirty-first minute, Milan, who entered the match following its victory over Tottenham in the first leg of the Champions League final on Tuesday, managed to score the winning goal after Messias lurked for a cross that was dispersed by the defense, and landed in front of him on the outskirts of the penalty area, so he fired it powerfully into the net.
Monza tried to return to the match on more than one occasion, to no avail.
The Rossoneri previously defeated their opponents 4-1 at the San Siro in their first match.
This is the second successive victory for Milan in the league, after it returned in the last stage to the winning streak at the expense of Turin, after a disastrous series that witnessed five matches without a win in the Calcio, in addition to its exit from the cup.