As Inter continue to widen their points gap at the top of the table, the rather unsettling possibility has emerged that they could win the Scudetto in the derby against AC Milan.
As La Gazzetta dello Sport (seen below) write this morning, Inter have won their last three league games 4-0 and they are 12 points ahead of second-placed Juventus meaning they are going full-steam ahead towards the title.
There are 12 games to go, but if the leaders maintain the average of the 2024 calendar year – 11 wins out of 11 in all competitions – the moment will come soon.
Looking at the fixtures, the possibility of that game being the derby on 21 April is anything but remote. If Inter, at the end of that derby, found themselves 16 points ahead of second place, the Scudetto would be a done deal: with five days to go, no one would be able to catch them anymore.
Then there is Antonio Conte’s record with Juventus up for grabs, given that in 2014 they got 102 points. Inter are still far away, 33 points behind to be exact, but if they continue to win them all, they will turn fiction into reality.
The next derby will happen after the second leg of the Champions League and Europa League quarter-finals and it is very possible that both Milan clubs will still be in Europe.
In the event there would be a level playing field, even if the Champions League is played on Tuesday and Wednesday and the Europa League on Thursday, Inter would enjoy one or two more days of rest. The game, we presume, would be scheduled for Sunday 21st or postponed to Monday 22nd.
It has never happened In the history of the single-league Serie A, from 1929-30, that a Scudetto was awarded at the end of a Milan derby. We would be faced with something new and unexplored.
It is true that Milan and Inter faced each other three times in the direct elimination phase of the Champions League, nights of very high tension in which nothing irreparable happened, except in 2005 the interruption due to the throwing of smoke bombs of the Curva Nord.
Those six games, as important as they were, did not earn any trophies. And the 1977 derby in the Coppa Italia final, 2-0 for Milan, is not comparable to a derby which could be worth the second star for Inter.
As if that wasn’t enough, in the next derby Milan will play at home, which would raise the temperature. The Milan derby is civil by tradition, the fans tease each other and then go home without descending into violence, but the event would be exceptional and would require exceptional measures.
In a predominantly Milan stadium, how would the Rossoneri fans react to the celebrating Nerazzurri fans? Let’s imagine that the Prefecture and Police Headquarters hope for a different epilogue, that Inter win the title on 13-14 April against Cagliari, or on 27-28 April against Torino.
A final interesting hypothesis is that the decisive game could be Sassuolo-Inter on 5 May. Winning the second star there might just erase some of the memories from 2022, when the Rossoneri celebrated there and Inter were left in tears at San Siro.
