Mourinho forever

When few years ago the rumour started that Mourinho may join Inter Milan I thought: NOW Jose, you'll have a chance to prove how good you are. Since 1965 Inter reached one CL final (1972 - 0-2 to Cruyff's Ayax) and just 2 other semis (1980 2-0 0-1 REal Madrid) and 2003 (I erased that from my memory, look it up). If he was after a challenge, he surely walked into one.

When Jose joined Inter they were finally winning leagues, but were still struggling in the CL. In the past few years we were kicked out in the quarter finals twice (Milan and Villareal) and in the second round three times (Valencia, Liverpool and Man U). While Milan, Villareal, Valencia and Liverpool left us neroazzurri fans with a bitter taste in our mouth due to the poor image and abysmal performances.

Last year was slightly different as I thought we did give Man U a game or two and we left the competition with our head high (well, maybe half mast). This was the first year of Mourinho at Inter and he hadn't completed his revolution. The squad was still largely Mancini’s and in the Man U tie he had to play Adriano and Viera which proved very costly. Plus Ibra pulled a typical Ibra from his hat (a bad Ibra, that is) and he fluffed his line at Old Trafford.

This year, good old Mou off-loaded Ibra to Barcelona and with the money earned he signed: Eto’o, Sneijder, Motta. Plus he got Lucio for free and then signed Pandev later. Now he could face the Chaaaaampiooooons with his own squad. It took the team few months to get going, but when they did Inter fans were in for a pleasant surprise: a team with character, experience and class like we haven’t had for decades.

Beat Chelsea home and away playing with 4 forwards. Professional with CSKA. Then his masterpiece with Barcelona. Created multiple chances in the first leg (scoring 3 goals)(I know, I know, thank you ref), coming from behind against the reigning champions, something nobody has managed to do all year. In the second leg, had to re-shuffle his cards with 10 minutes to go due to Pandev sudden injury, lost Motta after 30 minutes to a silly red card (bad ref) and resorted to the most classics of catenaccios.
To defend like Inter did in the second half is not something anyone can do. Inter players managed to hang by their fingernails thanks to their experience, resilience and concentration.

Inter transformation is, quite simply, astonishing. Until 2 months ago Mourinho didn’t have a lot of fans in Italy, not even amongst Inter’s. Now, he may have few more enemies but Inter fans all over the world are happy to celebrate this great Portuguese. And in two weeks they may celebrate him even more.