Inter Milan 2003

Coach: Héctor Cúper

Héctor Cúper's Inter Milan reached the 2002-03 Champions League semi-final, where they were eliminated by city rivals Milan in an all-Milan tie decided on away goals — a fixture made unusual by the fact that, with both clubs sharing the San Siro stadium, neither leg offered either side a true 'home' advantage in the traditional sense. The Nerazzurri squad featured a strong core including Christian Vieri, one of the most prolific out-and-out strikers of his generation, and a young Iván Córdoba anchoring the defence, but the club's perennial near-misses in this era — Cúper had also lost a Champions League final with Valencia a few years earlier — became a recurring source of frustration for Inter's supporters throughout the early 2000s. The semi-final defeat to Milan, watched by a divided San Siro crowd of over 80,000, remains one of the most dramatic derby occasions in the fixture's history precisely because of the stakes involved, adding to a growing narrative of Inter as the perennial nearly-team of Italian football before the club's fortunes turned decisively later in the decade.