Inter beat Barack Obama to Mars - 7M sport

Inter beat Barack Obama to Mars



Posted Wednesday, April 21, 2010 by theguardian.com

Italian press hail Inter after 3-1 win over Barcelona
'Barack Obama promised Mars within 30 years. He'll be late'

Inter beat Barack Obama to Mars

"We are the martians," declares the front page of this morning's Gazzetta dello Sport, a headline that makes rather more sense when you know they had previously described Barcelona's Lionel Messi in such terms. In the eyes of the Italian press Inter's 3-1 win over Barcelona in the first leg of their Champions League semi-final was, simply put, out of this world.

"Barack Obama promised Mars within 30 years," writes Gazzetta's Luigi Garlando. "He'll be late – Inter disembarked there yesterday. If Barcelona are Martians, [José] Mourinho's team deserve citizenship of the same planet. Inter could yet be outplayed at Camp Nou, even lose and be eliminated, but the truth told by three goals, by the personality and the quality of the Nerazzurri's display will remain: the two worlds are no longer a galaxy apart."

The metaphors were flowing thick and fast and you would only need to turn a single page to find Alberto Cerruti likening Inter's performance to the more topical phenomenon of volcanic eruptions. "This overwhelming Inter covered the great and widely feared Barcelona in black and blue lava," he exclaims. "To reach the end of the line in Madrid, 38 years after their last [European Cup] final, they will need another 90 minutes at Camp Nou, where Barcelona will still hope to get back in the running, repeating the 2-0 of 24 November last year.

"But this is a different Inter, a great Inter capable of winning a sixth consecutive game in the Champions League as has never happened in the past. A team who don't fear anyone, as you see when they go a goal down, because it was from that precise moment that they unleashed all of their rage."

Corriere dello Sport's front page annoints last night's Inter team as "Legendary", while Il Giornale invites its readers to get down on "bended knee" before Mourinho. "Messi? Messi who," asks Riccardo Signori in the same paper. "Instead of him we saw [Diego] Milito, goalscorer and the provider of assists (even if he did waste two chances to get himsellf into the game). We rediscovered the power of Maicon. We confirmed that [Wesley] Sneijder is the man of Provvidence, Samuel and Julio Cesar those of prudence."

In La Stampa Riccardo Beccantini calls the result "Mourinho's greatest work, the confirmation of how much this team follows him and appreciates his electric personality". Significant column inches are also devoted, as with most other papers, to Mario Balotelli's tantrum at the final whistle, and Paolo Brusorio notes that: "With him it often goes this way: a snowflake becomes a snowball, and a ball becomes an avalanche".

Disappointing as Balotelli's behaviour was, though, that incident does not diminish the achievement. The only thing that could do so at this stage would be failing to go through after such a result, and La Repubblica's Fabrizio Bocca sounds a note of caution under the headline "Rejoice, but don't get big-headed".

"Three-one against Barcelona is an important, almost historic result, which seals Inter's leap up among the great international clubs," writes Bocca. "But it would be stupid to get too carried away with this celebration: the hardest part of the job still has to be done and the final in Madrid still needs to be reached. For Inter it is now certainly not impossible to get there, but for Bacelona it is not impossible to overturn this result."



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