FC Internazionale Milano. Our common ground here at SempreInter.com. The club that brings us all together. Inter is one of the largest clubs in Italy. The black and blue squad who broke free from AC Milan in 1908 and after that, the story of success has kept on telling itself. The mix between the black and the blue strips makes themselves notable and recognized in the world of football. 18 Serie A-titles for the gentlemen of Inter who crowned it all with the win in Champions League in 2010. At the same moment I think about all of this, I can’t help but wonder. How about the womens team of Inter?
I had to search a lot. It was not easy at all. Womens football is not big in Italy at all and it was not just a simple google-search to find the answer. I browsed google, I only found Inter-jerseys for girls and a couple of pictures of Alyssa Milano at the Meazza-stadium. Not all repulsing, actually. I did not find a thing. Then I remembered a short article in a Swedish magazine from last year about the youth football cup, called “Gothia Cup”, were Inter had one of their girl-teams. I was right. Inter deployed a youth team of 15 year old girls to Sweden. They got beaten by the Swedish team Uppsala, not so much to brag about. Anyhow, then I found Inter’s womens team. ASD Femminile Inter Milano.
The history of the club is not ridiculously long, really. About a hundred years after the foundation of FC Internazionale, ASD Femminile Inter Milano started, in 2007. Back then, the club only had 65 players and now, in about five years, have more than 160 girls and grown women practicing football. From the youngest ones and all the way up to the “Prima Squadra”, the first team. The first team took a big step from Serie C up to Serie A2 before last season. This year, Inter also won Serie A2 and have qualified for the first division for the first time in the clubs history. Well worth noticing is that AC Milan’s womens team lost Serie A2 with zero points and minus 107 on goal-difference… Could happen to anyone…
This is the review of last seasons derby in Serie A2 between Inter and Milan. A derby that the Inter-girls takes home with a slaughtering five goals to squat, led by the team-captain, number nine, Regina Baresi. Regina Baresi is the daughter of Inter’s assisting coach and icon Giuseppe Baresi and Elena Tagliabue, president of ASD Femminile Inter Milano. Not so suprising that Regina Baresi is crowned team-captain, but I must say that she is one of the most notable players on the pitch after watching clips from a couple of matches. I would say that the best players of the team is Regina Baresi and Valentina Velati, alongside number ten Valentina Bianchessi in some sort of trequartista/fantasista-role, the goalkeeper Cristina Selmi and the defense veteran Stefania Panzini. In the derby I counted three out of five goals by Valentina Velati. After some more google searches, I draw the conclusion that the striker Giulia Colombo is one of the most promising talents in the first team. The coach Carmelo Malgeri usually lines up his players in the same formation as José Mourinho did with Inter. A system built like 4-2-3-1. The Inter-spirit can be inhaled in every second.
And even though you’re trying to catch the information and get attached to Italian football for women, the arena during the derby proves how big the sport is in Italy. It’s an empty stadium. Minimal. Although, a growing sport, just like everywhere else but the Italian ladies have many many miles to walk to reach the same status in Italy and abroad like the men’s “Calcio”. It is not an equal share of interest in the country or in the media. Maybe it would have been a bit different if had Berlusconi shown a little less “veline” and a little more “calico femminile” on Italian television. Maybe the world would have been a bit different.
PS. The headline? That’s the quote officially connected to ASD Femminile Inter Milano; “Questa e la vera storia di un sogno, il resto e il presente”, which means something like: “This is the true story of a dream, the rest is the present.”