Inter Milan slump puts season at risk ahead of daunting Barca trip
Inter Milan head into the Champions League semi-finals at risk of finishing the season empty-handed after a late-season slump killed their treble hopes and has left them wondering where the next win will come from.
Wednesday’s daunting clash at Barcelona could hardly have come at a worse time for Inter, who, since reaching the last four, have lost three games on the bounce without scoring a goal. Those three defeats handed Napoli a three-point lead at the top of Serie A with four matches remaining and left Inter out of the Italian Cup after a dismal 3-0 derby defeat at the hands of AC Milan last week.
Simone Inzaghi’s team look tired and bereft of ideas up front. Sunday’s 1-0 home loss to Roma was played in front of a soporific San Siro crowd, which couldn’t have been more different from the raucous atmosphere that accompanied their thrilling passage past Bayern Munich a fortnight ago. “We deserved more and created situations from which we failed to get anything, largely because we lacked sharpness,” said Inzaghi on Sunday.
“Maybe a positive result would have given us more energy, but we need to find that from within ourselves. We’ve got to recharge our batteries, both mentally and physically.” The last time Inter lost three in a row without scoring was in 2012 during Claudio Ranieri’s ill-fated spell on the Nerazzurri bench. Inter last lost to Roma in October 2022. Three days after that defeat, Inter beat Barcelona 1-0 on their way to that season’s final in Istanbul, which they narrowly lost to Manchester City.
Barca were Inter’s semi-final opponents 15 years ago when, under Jose Mourinho, the eventual treble winners nearly threw away the Serie A title to Roma, managed by Ranieri, before triumphing on the final day of the season.
