MILAN: Inter Milan strolled into the quarter-finals of the Italian Cup on Thursday after the Italian champions’ second string beat Udinese 2-0 at the San Siro.

Simone Inzaghi’s team will face Lazio in the last eight after first-half goals from Marko Arnautovic and Kristjan Asllani, who whipped in his first goal of the season straight from a corner.

“Clearly this is a great sign. It was an important match, a round-of-16, when I say I have 25 starters I mean it,” Inzaghi told a press conference.

“I make choices for Inter’s sake, they were very good at reading the game at its best. On Monday we won by a wide margin, and even there, there were situations where we could have done better. Today we were up against a worthy opponent and the changes we made didn’t show.

“I am lucky to have a great team. These are clearly very good signs from tonight and now we have to focus on the next matches.”

Asllani was one of eight changes to the Inter team which smashed Lazio 6-0 in Serie A on Monday night, and scored almost immediately after play was stopped for a few minutes for a medical emergency in the crowd.

The hosts then decided to see out the match rather than treat Udinese as they did Lazio, although Mehdi Taremi missed a great chance to add to his one goal scored this season when he struck the post one-on-one with Omri Glazer in the 77th minute.

The only potentially bad news for Inter was Lautaro Martinez being treated for what looked like a knee injury on the final whistle, although there was no indication of its seriousness.

The quarter-finals will be played as single-legged ties in February.

Inter are three points behind Serie A leaders Atalanta with a game in hand and face Como and Cagliari in their final fixtures of this year.

They will then jet off to take part in the Italian Super Cup in Saudi Arabia, where they will face Atalanta in the semi-finals on Jan 2.

Published in Dawn, December 21st, 2024