Inter and AC Milan Serie A title battle goes down to wire leaving city braced for headache

Pity the city of Milan’s chief of police this weekend. On Saturday, the Radio Italia Live concert, a major event in Italy’s music calendar, takes place in the city centre. Crowds have barely dispersed and the clean-up operation started than there is another headache for those in charge of public order.

One of the city’s great clubs will by 8pm on Sunday be crowned as Serie A champions. AC Milan, two points ahead of Inter Milan in the table, are favourites to clinch the scudetto on the last match day. Should they slip up at Sassuolo, Inter could still retain the title they won, after a long gap, last season.

But last year, things were both more complicated and at the same time simpler for anybody concerned with civic crowd control. Covid-19 restrictions still governed the numbers allowed into football stadiums and at public gatherings elsewhere, putting constraints on how exuberantly interisti, fans of Inter, were able to celebrate their title.

Nor had the city of Milan needed to contemplate a fully-engaged mass of local supporters celebrating the most important domestic prize for a long while before that. Each of the Serie A titles between 2012 and 2020 belonged to Juventus; any festivities around those were an issue for the city of Turin.

Worse still, the greater likelihood is that the stadium that both Milan and Inter share, the towering, ageing Giuseppe Meazza at San Siro, will be disgorging disappointed supporters on Sunday.

Inter are at home to Sampdoria. Tickets have sold out. The vast majority in the arena will have their attention simultaneously on Milan’s match at Sassuolo. The outcome there may well douse any enthusiasm for whatever Inter achieve against 15th-placed, safe-from-relegation Sampdoria.

Enough Milan