Inter Milan Youth team dominate the Viareggio Cup

For the 7th time Inter's Youth team won the Viareggio cup, one of the most important Youth international tournaments, and did it without losing a single game in the process. Mancini was there for the final game, won against Verona, and lather praised the team, which was extremely excited both for the result of the match and the presence of Mancio.

The tournament consists of two phases: the first where teams are divided into 8 groups, composed by 4 of them and the second is the classical knockout stage. Inter was in the 5th group with Pro Duta (Indonesian team), Parma and Genk (Belgian team) and here are the results of the matches and the standings of the group that was totally dominated by our Youth team.

Obviously Inter qualified for the next stage of the tournament where they had to face in the last sixteen the Serie D representative, defeated thanks to a goa in the second halfl by Bonazzoli. He was the leader in the quarterfinals too, scoring a double against Pescara to beat them 3-1 and advance to the semifinals, where Inter had to face Roma's Youth team, that wasn't up to the task and was defeated with an impressive 4-0 win by our youngsters, with yet again a goal by Bonazzoli.

In the final match Inter faced Verona's Youth team, which came into the game with 13 goals scored and only 6 conceded. It was a fun match, opened by a goal from the usual Bonazzoli, who took advantage of a careless back pass by a Verona defender and put the ball in the back with a sweet lob. I Nerazzurri tried to score several times but they were denied by some great saves by Pierluigi Gollini (later named best keeper of the tournament) and in the 15th minute of the second half Verona tied the game, but after that, it was all Inter and the late goal by the right-back Gyamfi sealed the win. Congratulations to Youth team head coach Stefano Vecchi for this great accomplishment, he is doing a great job at training our youngsters and at making them perform in the best way possible.

Here are the highlights of the exciting match.

Inter absolutely dominated the tournament, finishing with 18 goals made and only 4 conceded in both stages of the tournament, with ten different players able to score: Bonazzoli (5), Rapaic, Della Giovanna, Dimarco, Gyamfi, Steffè, Rocca, Palazzi, Appiah (2), Camara (2).

If Inter's first team is looking to make their roster younger, this tournament showed that they should give a look to their Youth team to do so, because there are many players with great talent that could be already promoted. Bonazzoli, winner of the Golden Boy trophy and scoring leader of the tournament with 5 goals, is one of them and he played some minutes this season in the Coppa Italia against Sampdoria, team that will join this summer on loan, hoping to play more games and develop his already good striker's skills.

Even if I think that reporting such things gives more visibility to something that shouldn't be seen or heard at all, Arrigo Sacchi (former Milan coach, an Italian legend) took some times yesterday to state that

There are too many black players in our Youth teams and it's a shame for our football. Italy is a country without dignity and pride.

Obviously he was taking a shot to Inter, which started the final match of the tournament with 4 black players. It is worth nothing that an Italian player was elected the best player of the tournament, who has also been used in the first team. I don't want to talk about the obvious racist background of the thing, but my opinion is that a team should have in their roster the best players possible to win games, regardless of their skin color (we are in 2015, folks) or their birthplace. It is a shame for a beautiful country, like Italy is, see its reputation stained by such reactionary statements (remember what Tavecchio said?) that lead to think that they're all racist people and above all it is time to remove exposure and powers to those persons, like NBA's Commissioner Adam Silver did with former Clippers' owner Donald Sterling.