Inter Milan, Getty Images January 6, 2025, 11:03 p.m

Italian football decided to start the first full week of the new year right away with the competition for the trophy. However, not on the territory of your own country, but where you can additionally earn a lot of money, simply by delivering the participants of the tournament in the so-called “final four” format and a certain number of fans for flavor. However, this is already a story from the financial plane, while we are only interested in purely football.

And here there was really something to see in the final match for the Italian Super Cup, in which the two great Milan giants – Inter and Milan – met with each other, on the condition that the Nerazzurri were the current holders of the trophy and the champions of the country, and the Rossoneri were the only ones , who have beaten Simone Inzaghi’s side in the current campaign, let alone with Paulo Fonseca at the helm.

All in all, the first half of this matchup was clearly not what you would expect from the game poster. Calm football, which was sometimes interrupted by goals scored by Taremi and Lautaro Martinez, as well as by Rangers. Against this background, it was even surprising to see Calhanoglu’s muscle injury at the 35th minute, but it was more likely due to general fatigue.

And even more unexpected was that Milan generally looked more or less decent in defense during the first half, but only in regular time. Sergio Conceição’s team made a mistake in stoppage time, and Lautaro was finally able to hit the other goal with a shot from the right wing from a free kick from Taremi’s pass.

And as soon as the teams returned to the field after the break, de Vremya Taremi’s deep throw was turned into the second goal by Megnana, after which it began to seem that the Rossoneri had no potential to recover from such blows. However, Conceisan had Raphael Leau among his wildcards and the Milan coach threw him into action straight away despite his recovery from injury.

Surprisingly, it worked perfectly. Leau simply did not leave chances for opponents during high-speed rushes, and not only collected warnings for them, but also earned standards, the first of which was realized by Theo Hernandez with a shot under the left post. Milan thus believed that it was still quite possible to win back, and in the subsequent episodes with the participation of Rangers, it was only a miracle that Sommer and Bastoni did not let this happen even before the start of the last half hour of playing time.

And then there was Augusto’s moment, whose close-range header hit the post and almost crossed the line, had it not been for Meignan’s amazing reaction. Like Mike’s save late in the game when Dumfries was breaking through. Then the score just became tied again, as Theo’s cross from the left wing found Pulisic, who dealt with the shot into the far corner in two touches. The game gradually began to approach the penalty shootout.

However, no, we never saw the lottery this evening. Because Inter in the second half’s stoppage time did exactly the same thing that Milan did at the end of the first – lost players in their own penalty area, which Pulisic and Leau took advantage of on the right wing, and Abraham had to hit an empty net from the Portuguese’s cross. Oh, and two starting matches for Conceisan.

Chief referee Simone Sozzi’s final whistle from Serregno confirmed Milan as the 2025 Italian Super Cup winners, while Inter stopped a step away from the trophy.

Inter — Milan 2:3
Goals: L. Martinez, 45+1, Taremi, 47 — Hernandez, 52, Pulisic, 80, Abraham, 90+3

Inter: Sommer – Bissek, de Vray (Darmian, 85), Bastogne – Dumfries, Barella (Fratezi, 85), Calhanoglu (Asllani, 35), Mkhitaryan (Zelinski, 66), Dimarco (Augusto, 66) – Taremi, Martinez.

Milan: Mainan — Emerson, Thiau, Tomori, Hernandez — Moussa (Loftus-Cheek, 77), Fofana, Reynders (Abraham, 77) — Pulisic, Morata, Jimenez (Leau, 50).

Warning: Mkhitaryan, Dumfries, Barella, Bastogny – Tomori