Inter and Fiorentina will play the Coppa Italia final in Rome tonight, the first final of the two they will have to play in less than a month. On 10 June, Inter will play the Champions League match against Manchester City, while Fiorentina will play the Conference League final against West Ham three days earlier. And before these, on May 31st, there will be the Europa League final with another Italian team involved, Roma, who will try to win against Sevilla in Budapest.
The double final is a novelty above all for Fiorentina, who will play two in a single season for the first time since 1961, the year in which they won both the Cup Winners’ Cup against Rangers in Glasgow and the Italian Cup against Lazio. Also counting the Italian Super Cup won in the January derby against Milan, Inter will even play three, as in the 2010/11 season, that of the so-called triplet.
For Fiorentina it will be the eleventh final of the Italian Cup, nine years after the last one, lost 3-1 against Napoli, also in Rome. The last of the six editions it has won dates back to 2001, when coached by Roberto Mancini it overcame Parma in a final played again between two legs. That Coppa Italia also remains the last success in the history of Fiorentina, who have been through a lot since then, including a relegation, a bankruptcy, a season in Serie C, two changes of ownership and the death of its captain, Davide Astori, during the 2017/18 championship.
Vincenzo Italiano (Paolo Bruno/Getty Images)
After the last complicated seasons, Fiorentina has gradually returned to being more competitive since being coached by Vincenzo Italiano, one of the most popular emerging coaches in Italy. Last year, in his first season, he brought Fiorentina back into the European cups via a seventh-place finish and have now reached two finals, also thanks to a large and homogeneous squad that managed to manage itself between three different competitions. It is eleventh in the league, but if it were to win at least one of these two cups it would automatically qualify for the Europa League.
Inter comes from a more linear path. They are the holders of the Coppa Italia, which last year won in the final against Juventus, and tonight they could win it for the ninth time, joining Roma in second place among the most successful teams in the competition. He could also win it for two consecutive seasons for the first time in twelve years, as he has already done with the Italian Super Cup.
With the arrival in the final of the Italian Cup, and above all with the qualification for the Champions League final obtained in the derby against Milan in the semifinals, he also saved a rather erratic season made up of 12 defeats in the league (never so many since the 2016 season/ 17). Tonight’s final will be the eighth in his career for his coach, Simone Inzaghi, who only lost the first, played in 2017 with Lazio (in the Italian Cup against Juventus).
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