Many had written off Edin Dzeko in recent years. But the old master does not let up and is about to reach the premier class final. Inter Milan know what it’s about the “swan”.
What does age mean? Edin Dzeko is convincing in at least his third season as a footballer and is well on the way to crowning his career with the greatest possible showdown. The Champions League final in June in Istanbul is very close for the Bosnian after Inter Milan won 2-0 in the first leg in the semifinals over city rivals AC Milan.
“Nothing has been done yet,” warned the 37-year-old dutifully after the gala performance. The current form of the Nerazzurri and at the same time Milan’s personal worries make the chances of an Inter disappointment in the second leg next Tuesday extremely small. With “at least one leg in the final”, not only the newspaper “Tuttosport” sees the team around striker old master Dzeko.
400th professional goal of Dzeko’s career
“Swan of Sarajevo” is what Dzeko is called in Italy, and the national team player likes the nickname. And he did him credit on Wednesday evening in front of more than 75,000 spectators in the sold-out San Siro Stadium. Swans are elegant creatures, but beware if they bite! In the eighth minute, the attacker refused to be thrown off balance by a corner kick from Milan captain Davide Calabria, balanced on his right leg and volleyed the ball into the goal with his left. “That’s why he’s the swan,” wrote the club on Instagram.
It was the 400th professional goal in Dzeko’s career, as the statisticians calculated. In the Champions League he has 29 goals for Wolfsburg, Manchester City, AS Roma and Inter. He is only the seventh professional to score at least 20 goals in the premier class after his 30th birthday. Only Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Robert Lewandowski, Karim Benzema, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Didier Drogba have previously made it into this over-30 statistic. What a choice!
Coach Simone Inzaghi praised Dzeko and the second Inter goal scorer Henrich Mchitarjan, who scored in the 11th minute – also with a Bundesliga past and also in his fourth decade – as “fantastic”. “It’s not old…”, wrote “Tuttosport”.
Dzeko seeded in the Champions League
In his career, Dzeko often seemed like someone who could have been even better and even more successful. With VfL Wolfsburg, he sensationally became champion in 2009 and became one of the most sought-after strikers in Europe. In January 2011, Manchester City brought him to the island for the then German record transfer fee of around 35 million euros. In 2015 he went to AS Roma, six seasons later he moved to Inter within Serie A.
And the Milanese know what they have in him. Dzeko is set in the Champions League, even if the hype surrounding Belgian Romelu Lukaku has always been greater. But Dzeko already knows that from Manchester, which his former teammate Micah Richards – now a TV expert and joker on duty – recalled on Wednesday. “Everyone was talking about Agüero, Balotelli or Tevez back then. Dzeko always played second fiddle.” In the legendary match of the last Premier League matchday in 2012, when Agüero managed to win the title with the last action of the winning goal, it was Dzeko who made the coup possible with his equalizer in added time, as Richards emphasized.
In Rome, Dzeko flourished again and in 2018 was in a splendid semifinal against Liverpool just before reaching the final: after a 2:5 in the first leg, a 4:2 in the second leg was just not enough. Now it should be so far. “Patience and hard work always pay off,” said the striker before disappearing into the Milan night on Wednesday.
Source: Stern
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