Friday 25 September 2009

Internazionale Milano Season 2008 - 2009

In season 2008-2009 Inter have a new coach, Jose Mourinho. He was coach of Chelsea before. The Special One replacing Roberto Mancini who has been brought Inter back to glory with win 3rd Inter scudetto in a row. With the touch of hands Mourinho, Inter Milan found a different game. Mourinho just bring 3 new players, Ricardo Quaresma from Porto, Amantino Mancini from Roma and Sulley Muntari. Inter squad is deservedly feared by other clubs, especially in Italy.

Scudetto and the Champions League trophy are targeted to Mourinho's squad for the gathering. But Inter appearance under Mourinho in his first season was not exactly scary, especially at Europe stage. Nerrazzuri did qualify in the group phase but in the next phase they fail to beat MU and failed to get European Champions League Trophy. At the end of the competition serie A, Inter Milan win the scudetto champions again and it was the 17th scudetto for Nerrazurri. Appearance of new players were not satisfactory, Mancini and Quaresma could not show their best qualities, even Quaresma had loaned to Chelsea. Muntari who only managed to show his class as a world player.



On stage serie A, Inter Milan's striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic be top scorer with 25 goals. Mourinho also orbit two talented young players that season, Mario Ballotelli and Davide Santon. Both are the future of Italian players.

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The Ressurection of Nerrazurri


On 15 June 2005, Internazionale won the Coppa Italia, defeating Roma in the two-legged final 3-0 on aggregate (1-0 win in Milan and 2-0 win in Rome) and followed that up on 20 August 2005 by winning the Supercoppa Italiana after an extra-time 1-0 victory against original 2004-05 Serie A champions Juventus (before being stripped of this title). This Super Cup win was Inter's first since 1989, coincidentally the same year since Inter last won the Scudetto before 2006. On 11 May 2006, Inter retained their Coppa Italia trophy by once again, defeating Roma with a 4-1 aggregate victory (A 1-1 scoreline in Rome and a 3-1 win at the San Siro).

Inter were awarded the 2005-06 Serie A championship as they were the highest placed side in the season's final league table after points were stripped from Juventus and AC Milan — both sides being involved in the match fixing scandal that year. On 14 July 2006, the Italian Federal Appeal Commission found Serie A clubs Juventus, Lazio, Fiorentina, Reggina, and Milan guilty of match-fixing and punished the five clubs involved. As a result, with the relegation of Juventus to Serie B (for the first ever time in their history) and the 8-point deduction for city rivals Milan, Inter became favorites to retain their Serie A title for the upcoming 2006-07 Serie A season.


During the season, Inter went on a record-breaking run of 17 consecutive victories in Serie A, starting on 25 September 2006 with a 4-1 home win over Livorno and ending on 28 February 2007 after a 1-1 draw at home to Udinese. The 5-2 away win at Catania on 25 February 2007 broke the original record of 15 matches held by both Bayern Munich and Real Madrid from the "Big 5" (the top flight leagues in England, Italy, Spain, France, and Germany). The run lasted for almost five months and is among the best in European league football, with just Benfica (29 wins), Celtic (25 wins) and PSV (22 wins) bettering it. Inter's form dipped a little as they recorded 0-0 and 2-2 draws against relegation-battlers Reggina and slumping to Palermo (respectively), the latter game featuring a second-half comeback after Palermo went up 2-0 at halftime. They could not keep their invincible form up near the end of the season as well, as they lost their first game of the domestic season to Roma at the San Siro 3-1, thanks to two late Roma goals. Inter had enjoyed an unbeaten Serie A run for just under a year.


On 22 April 2007, Inter were crowned Serie A champions for the second consecutive season after defeating Siena 2-1 at Stadio Artemio Franchi. Italian World Cup winning defender Marco Materazzi scored both goals in the 18th and 60th minute, with the latter being a penalty. Inter started the 2007–08 season with the goal of winning both Serie A and UEFA Champions League. The team started well in the league, topping the table from the first round of matches, and also managed to qualify for the Champions League knockout stage; however, a late collapse leading to a 2-0 defeat with 10 men away to Liverpool on 19 February in the Champions League threw into question manger Roberto Mancini's future at Inter, and domestic form took a sharp turn of fortune with the team failing to win in the three following Serie A games (drawing with Sampdoria and major league opponents Roma, before losing away to Napoli, their first domestic defeat of the season. After being eliminated by Liverpool in the Champions League, Mancini then announced his intention to leave his job, only to change his mind the following day.

An improvement in results then gave Inter the chance to wrap up their Scudetto race twice, but a defeat to city rivals Milan and a home draw against Siena catapulted Roma to within just one point of Inter going into the final round of the Championship. Inter then managed to win at Parma thanks to two goals by Swedish striker Zlatan Ibrahimović, who was still recovering from a knee injury and came off the bench to score for his team.


Following this win, the club decided to sack Mancini on 29 May, citing his declarations following the Champions League defeat to Liverpool as the reason.[4] On 2 June, Inter announced on their official website that they had appointed former FC Porto and Chelsea boss José Mourinho as new head coach, with Giuseppe Baresi as his assistant. This made Mourinho the only foreign coach in Italy in the 2008–09 season kick-off.[5] Mourinho made only three additions to the squad during the summer transfer window of 2008 in the form of Mancini,[6] Sulley Muntari[7], and Ricardo Quaresma.[8] Under Mourinho's first season as Inter head coach, the Nerazzurri won a Italian Super Cup and a fourth consecutive title, being, however, also eliminated from the Champions League in the first knockout round for a third consecutive time, losing to Manchester United. In winning the league title for the fourth consecutive time, Inter joined Torino and Juventus as the only teams to do this and the first to accomplish this feat in over 50 years.

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