MILAN: Inter Milan’s miserable month continued when they drew 0-0 against city rivals AC Milan in first leg of their Coppa Italia semi-final on Tuesday.

Inter have won only one of their past seven matches in all competitions since the start of February. That run has seen the defending Serie A champions fall off the top spot in the league and lose 2-0 at home to Liverpool in the first leg of their Champions League match-up.

It was also the fourth straight match in which Inter failed to score. The Nerazzurri have now gone more than 400 minutes without finding the back of the net.

“We’ve had lots of games and we need to rediscover our spark but we’re working on it,” Inter coach Simone Inzaghi said. “We still have the best attack. Going four matches without scoring obviously creates headlines but we will soon be scoring again”.

“I think its only natural for us to drop off a bit now. We were going full throttle in November, December and January. We’re not playing as well as we were ... We’re trying to recover our physical and mental strength.”

Both teams had chances at San Siro and though neither goalkeeper was really troubled, Inter’s Samir Handanovic did have to pull off a one-handed save to keep out a Rafael Leao curler at the start of the second half.

Milan haven’t won the cup in nearly two decades since 2003 while Inter haven’t gotten past the semi-finals since winning the last of their seven titles in 2011.

The second-leg match is scheduled on April 20 while the final will be on May 11.

Published in Dawn, March 3rd, 2022