On Saturday, Inter Milan defeated Sassuolo 4-2 to be ready for their Champions League semi-final confrontation with AC Milan. Meanwhile, Inter Milan’s city rivals, AC Milan, were defeated 2-0 by Serie A strugglers Spezia. Inter Milan will face AC Milan in the semi-finals of the Champions League.
A brace from Romelu Lukaku on his 30th birthday, an additional goal from Lautaro Martinez, and an unlucky own goal from Ruan Tressoldi were enough for Inter to secure a seventh consecutive win across all competitions. With the win, Inter moved level on 66 points with second-placed Juventus.
According to Lukaku, who spoke with Sky Sport, “The coach told us the game was a match-point for the top four,” and “we’re in good shape as we’ve been winning a lot of games recently,”
We still have a chance to win two trophies, but on Tuesday we play a very challenging match against the squad who won the league championship the previous year.
Inter has a 2-0 advantage over Milan heading into Tuesday’s second leg, and the team coached by Simone Inzaghi appears to be in excellent position to advance to their first Champions League final since the year 2010 (when they were last crowned champions).
Their hopes of qualifying for the next season’s edition of Europe’s premier club tournament were also substantially strengthened by Saturday’s triumph, which came after their top four competitors, Lazio, Milan, and Atalanta, all dropped points. This allowed them to move up to third place in the standings.
Inter is currently in fourth position, five points ahead of fifth-placed Milan; yet, despite the fact that it appeared as though they were going to win easily, things did not wind up going Inter’s way in the end. After Domenico Berardi and Joaquin Correa each had goals disallowed for offside, Lukaku gave Inter the lead with a rasping strike just before the interval. This came after each of the aforementioned players had goals disallowed.
Tressoldi headed Raoul Bellanova’s cross into his own net ten minutes after the restart, and the game appeared to be finished three minutes later when Martinez’s effort was deflected in again by Tressoldi. However, Martinez’s shot was again deflected in by Tressoldi.
Matheus Henrique and Davide Frattesi each scored on a header to get Sassuolo back into the game. However, Romelu Lukaku scored the game-winning goal with two minutes left to play with a superb low finish to secure the three points for Everton.
Both Przemyslaw Wisniewski and Salvatore Esposito scored their first goals in Serie A in the game’s closing 15 minutes, helping Spezia beat Milan for the first time in two months and giving them their first victory.
“You’re not cutting it”
The squad coached by Leonardo Semplici is still in danger of relegation; but, after their victory on Saturday, they are level on points with Verona, who are now one position above the bottom three and will play home to Torino on Sunday.
Following their 2-2 draw against Lazio on Friday night, Spezia will travel to Lecce the following weekend. Lecce is now in 16th place and is only two points above the relegation zone.
In an interview with DAZN, Esposito said, “It’s a goal I’ve dreamed about ever since I was a child. I used to talk to a good friend of mine who is a big Milan fan, and I’d always tell him that I’d score against them.”
These are significant victories for Spezia, and they wouldn’t have been possible without the team’s unwavering trust, which is why you’re witnessing it today.
The Milan club coached by Stefano Pioli has only won three of their past 11 league matches, and their loss on Saturday was their 10th in a bizarre season in which their defense of their league title was effectively ended by February.
“The performance tonight was not satisfactory… On Tuesday, we will engage in yet another combat. “It’s difficult to explain why we’ve had so much trouble with matches of this nature,” said Milan defender Simon Kjaer. “We’ve had a lot of trouble.”
“In our line of business, it is important to keep the matches that you play in distinct parts of your mind because the match that we played on Wednesday and the one that we played today were two whole different things. It is imperative that we put this matter out of our thoughts and continue with our job.
Salernitana will have to wait for mathematical safety as a result of Spezia’s victory, but they should remain in Serie A after Antonio Candreva scored the only goal in their 1-0 victory over Atalanta in the day’s opening match.
Candreva scored the game-winning goal for Salernitana in the 93rd minute with a strong low shot from the edge of the box. The match took place in the southern region of Italy under a torrential downpour.
With three games left in the season, Salernitana are currently eight points ahead of Spezia, while Atalanta are currently eighth and seven points below the places that qualify for the Champions League.