Nerazzurri on brink of 21st Scudetto… not that anyone’s talking about it

Inter Milan will likely win its 21st Scudetto on Sunday. And if not Sunday, then next Saturday. And if not then…well, it will have.

Should Napoli and AC Milan lose to Como and Sassuolo, respectively, it would even be champions before kicking off against Parma at San Siro (1:45 p.m., FuboTV).

Typically, an imminent title would be the main talking point — and by some distance — in the days before that title is won. It would also be expected that this Inter group would get its flowers, what with the next few weeks being a sort of last hurrah.

Goalkeepers Yann Sommer and Raffaele Di Gennaro, defenders Stefan de Vrij, Francesco Acerbi and Benjamin Pavard (who has spent this season on loan to Marseille), wing-back Matteo Darmian and playmaker Henrikh Mkhitaryan are all out of contract in June. Federico Dimarco and Hakan Çalhanoglu have another year remaining on theirs, but the latter will almost certainly depart at that point, if not before.

Then there’s key centre-back Alessandro Bastoni. He wants a summer move to Barcelona, which is almost understandable. But more on him in a moment.

Of the Nerazzurri lineup that started last spring’s Champions League final, six are either on expiring pacts or will be shortly.

Inter didn’t win that final, and it didn’t win the 2023 final, either. But in a five-year period it came runner-up in the Champions League on two occasions, won the Coppa Italia twice and will now celebrate a third Scudetto. That’s a mighty impressive half-decade, and certainly one worth recognizing as much of the squad gets set to depart.

But no one’s talking about it.

Some of the disregard may be down to the fact that Inter’s triumph is already assumed. That said, a whole lot of airtime and countless pink pages in La Gazzetta dello Sport are still being filled with Italian football news — just not the kind about actual games or happenings on the pitch.

The story sucking most of the oxygen out of the room is about — surprise, surprise — a refereeing scandal.

Last weekend, Agenzia Italia reported that Gianluca Rocchi, the designatore responsible for assigning the refs to Serie A and Serie B games, was being investigated for fraud. The Guardia di Finanza suspected he’d been using his position to designate certain officials who might favourably manage matches involving certain clubs.

The probe also caught VAR supervisor Andrea Gervasoni in its crosshairs. The prosecutor’s office was concerned that, on at least one occasion, Gervasoni had interfered with a VAR decision.

Both men claim to be innocent, and neither has been formally charged.

Rocchi, however, did himself no favours this week when he gave a bizarre interview to television program Le Iene, saying, “We work in only one way, so there are no big problems. I am transparent with everyone on everything. I repeat, I always work exclusively in one way.”

Would that “way” be banging on VAR booths to influence particular rulings, as he’s alleged to have done?

It all looks extremely bad, and a lot of people are being presumed guilty. This, after all, is the 20-year “anniversary” of the Calciopoli scandal, in which the refereeing establishment was found to be so corrupted that champion Juventus was stripped of two titles and relegated to Serie B.

It’s not expected that anything of any comparable magnitude has happened this time around, but Italy is spooked nonetheless. The country wants to host Euro 2032, and it’s not keen to give UEFA any excuse to relocate the tournament.

So there’s that.

What little air is left has been taken up by caso escort, an inquiry into a Milan prostitution ring in which at least 70 footballers have been named. None are being investigated — the crimes here are alleged to have been committed by a shadowy escort service — but among them are a number of Inter and AC Milan players, including Bastoni.

It bears repeating that the 27-year-old is one among dozens of players whose name has been dropped by outlets including Corriere dello Sport and Tuttosport, but it’s also just his latest high-profile association with a regrettable incident.

The other, of course, is the red card he received in Italy’s World Cup qualification play-off against Bosnia and Herzegovina. The ejection reduced the Azzurri to 10 men for all of the second half and extra time, and when Bosnia prevailed on penalties he was left bearing much of the blame.

It was extremely unfair, and in the weeks since Italy’s elimination, Bastoni — his country’s best defender — has been booed wherever he’s gone. Little wonder he wants to escape to Spain.

Now, take the refereeing and escort scandals, add Italy’s latest international flop, and what you’ve got is, at best, an overall frustration with football and, at worst, an ongoing national outrage that not even a historically good Inter side can soothe.

The scandals and disillusionment with the Azzurri, rightfully requiring attention, have nevertheless overshadowed a very good Inter team about to win the Scudetto — a 21st in club history and third from a group that merits more than a passing nod.

What a shame.

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