After
guiding Internazionale to their first Scudetto in over ten years last season, manager Leonard Lim ended his ten-year love affair with Internazionale and embarked on a new challenge by taking over the reins of Juventus this summer.
Ironically, Juventus was to play Inter in the season opening fixture, the Italian Super Cup, at the Delle Alpi. With home advantage, the bookmakers tipped Juventus to beat Inter in this heavyweight match.
The opening ten minutes of the match provided a rude shock to the Juventus players who came into the match on the back of a 7-1 friendly victory over FC Utrecht three days ago. Inter goalscoring machine, Adriano wasted no time in announcing his intention to win the Golden Boot by blasting a goal in the very first minute. It seemed the central defensive pairing of Cannavaro and Thuram could do nothing to stop him on his rampage. Juventus' nightmare was to continue as Obafemi Martins scored two quick goals in the 6th and 9th minute and Inter raced into a 3-0 lead over Juventus.
Juventus, however, was made of tougher material and their resilience showed as the most remarkable of all comebacks was orchestrated. Juve's own scoring machine Zlatan Ibrahimovic provided a glimmer of hope for the fans by scoring in the 31st minute and veteran playmaker Pavel Nedved added another one in the 43rd minute to put Juve just one goal behind Inter as the game went into half-time break.
Captain Del Piero led by example to equalize in the 54th minute and sent the Juve fans into an uproar. Juventus had came back from the dead! It might perhaps be the dawning realization that the game was slipping away from their hands that Inter players began to show their frustration and cracked under pressure. Adriano promptly hacked down Emerson in the 55th minute and was sent off for the rough challenge. Emerson, too, was unable to continue in the match and was replaced by Manuele Blasi. It was later diagnosed that Emerson will be out for four months.
Juve, however, was unable to make use of the numerical advantage and the match went into extra-time. Signs of stress in Inter players were beginning to show as Samuel brought Ibrahimovic down in the penalty area in the 93rd minute. Ibrahimovic duly converted the penalty kick to send the Juve fans into delirium.
Momentum was clearly on Juve's side as Ibrahimovic completed his hat-trick in the 112th minute to make victory beyond Inter's grasp. Young Inter striker Daniele Capelloni beat Thuram to a header and scored in the 117th minute to set up a nail-biting finish but Juve held on and continued the tradition of winning the Super Cup much to the delight of the Juve fans. 5-4 the final score. We had just witnessed the mother of all comebacks.
