Inter’s Coppa Italia quarter-final tie against AC Milan tonight will be a clash of two different generations, a leading Italian journalist wrote today.
Antonio Conte’s side are hosting their city rivals later on today with kick-off scheduled for 20:45 local time and the team selections from both coaches will differ massively.
The Nerazzurri will be calling upon several veterans all in their 30s while AC Milan coach Stefano Pioli will be relying on youngsters barely in their 20s.
“Pioli will call upon the boys born in 1999, Diego Dalot, Alexis Saelemaekers, Brahim Diaz and Rafael Leao,” Luigi Garlando wrote in Gazzetta dello Sport’s print edition.
“Conte meanwhile will call upon the veterans in Aleksandar Kolarov, 35, Alexis Sanchez, 32, Ivan Perisic, 31, Matteo Darmian 31, and Arturo Vidal, 33, while leaving out two youngsters in Alessandro Bastoni and Achraf Hakimi.
“Yesterday Pioli and Conte made humble circumstantial comments in order not to discuss their tremendous desire to win this derby, which will create a host of problems for the losing team and have repercussions on the league.”
This will be the second time that the Milanese clubs meet this season.
The previous meeting took place earlier on in the season in Serie A and on that occasion, AC Milan ran out 2-1 winners.
The winner of tonight’s match at San Siro will take on the winner of the quarter-final clash between Juventus and Serie B side SPAL in the semi-finals of the competition next month.
