Inter Milan Shatters Records With Italian Super Cup Win Over Napoli
RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA(Forbs)-It was always meant to be him. Lautaro Martinez swept in Benjamin Pavard’s assist to win Inter Milan their third consecutive Italian Super Cup. The Nerazzurri captain’s 21st goal of the season was enough to beat Napoli in Riyadh, clinching the first of three possible trophies as coach Simone Inzaghi charges towards the 2023-24 Serie A title and launches another assault on the UEFAEFA -0.6% Champions League.
Chaos reigned at Al-Awaal Park as Napoli’s Geovanni Simeone was sent from the field with half an hour remaining, cautioned for a second time after fouling Francesco Acerbi. With the game in the balance, and with Inter laying siege, Martinez finally found himself unmarked in front of Pierluigi Gollini’s goal with enough space to thrash in the 91st-minute killer blow. The Argentine joins Samuel Eto’o, Andriy Shevchenko, Carlos Tevez and Alessandro Del Piero as the joint second-highest goalscorer (3) in Super Cup history, one behind Paolo Dybala.
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The ‘Simone Inzaghi Cup’
With victory, Inzaghi has overtaken Fabio Capello and Marcello Lippi, two legends of Italian football, for Supercoppa wins. Including his coaching spell with Lazio, the 47-year-old has taken five of the past seven titles. Inzaghi also set another record by winning his fifth final at Inter, overtaking Helenio Herrera and Roberto Mancini, who both received four.
“There are no secrets really, you need a great team, which I have at Inter and had before with Lazio,” Inzaghi told Mediaset. “I was optimistic, but only to a certain degree, because usually you have a week or more to prepare for a Final and we didn’t have that here.”
A former striker best known for scoring 70 goals in Serie A, Inzaghi was part of the title-winning Lazio squad, led by Sven-Göran Eriksson, that defeated Marcello Lippi’s Inter 4-3 in the 2000 Super Cup Final. Following his retirement in 2010, he then returned to the Biancocelesti in a managerial capacity in 2016 and seized his first two Super Cups in 2017 and 2019 with success over Juventus on both occasions.
