There will be no more Champions League dream, but Inter Milan are still aiming to break records in Serie A this season.
This is highlighted in today’s print edition of Milan-based newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport, via FCInterNews.
The disappointment of Wednesday’s penalty shootout elimination from the Champions League against Atletico Madrid was resounding for Inter.
And it leaves the Nerazzurri in somewhat of an awkward position in the context of their season.
Inter will not have a European adventure like last season, where they reached the Champions League final.
But domestically, it does not seem as though the Nerazzurri have all that much to fight for either.
It is very nearly a foregone conclusion that Inter will win the Serie A title. With a sixteen-point advantage in the Serie A table, it would take a truly spectacular collapse for the team not to clinch that objective.
And Inter have already won the Supercoppa Italiana. Conversely, the Nerazzurri had an early exit from the Coppa Italia.
No Champions League – But Inter Have Plenty To Fight For In Serie A
All of this could lead to the sense that there is little at stake in Inter’s run-in of the season.
But the Gazzetta note that now the Nerazzurri could be all the hungrier and more motivation to try and write their name in the record books.
Firstly, there would be the matter of the final points total.
Inter are currently on 75 points after 28 matches. This means that the team could theoretically finish the season with an eye-watering 105 points.
Of course, that would be quite an ask.
But a finish of 102 points would equal the all-time record in Serie A – Juventus’s from the 2013-14 season.
Inter could afford one loss and still equal that record. And just one draw and nine wins would see Inter break the all-time record.
And as far as the club record, that belongs to Roberto Mancini’s Inter of the mid-2000s. That Nerazzurri side went as high as 97 points in a single campaign.
It seems more than reasonable that Simone Inzaghi’s team could exceed that.
Then there is the matter of the clean sheet.
Currently, the highest number of clean sheets that a team has kept in a single Serie A season is 21.
A total of five different teams have managed that. Including Lazio last season.
Inter are currently on seventeen. Therefore, if Inter can prevent the opposition from scoring in half of their ten final matches of the campaign, they will outright break that record.
And Inter captain Lautaro Martinez is thirteen goals away from the all-time Serie A goalscoring record, belonging to Gonzalo Higuain and Ciro Immobile.
It is certainly well within the realm of possibility that the Argentine could catch up in that respect.
