sport education

The continued experiment of staging the curtain raiser to the Italian season overseas again proved a success with a near-capacity crowd in the Olympic stadium seeing an action-packed encounter.

Jose Mourinho’s Inter, with Eto’o going close several times, had largely dominated the game, but Lazio’s Brazilian midfielder Matuzalem made the breakthrough just after the hour mark.

Lazio captain Tommaso Rocchi’s free kick caused chaos in the Inter area and the ball rebounded off goalkeeper Julio Cesar for Matuzalem to slot the ball home.

Rocchi quickly grabbed a second as he superbly chipped keeper Cesar to make it 2-0.

Mourinhoi made a series of substitutions and it worked to good effect as Eto’o, Barcelona’s top scorer last season, smashed the ball high into the net in the 75th minute.

Substitute Diego Milito had the ball in the net soon afterwards, but the equalizer was ruled out for offside, while Eto’o went close with a free kick near the final whistle.

Mourinho took defeat in his strike and claimed his side were the better team.

“Lazio have the joy of victory, we have the calmness of having a team and a future,” he told the Press Association.

“I am very happy with my players’ performance, with this new style that is being born, but obviously I can’t be happy with the result, above all because as everyone saw it could have finished in a different way, such as 3-1 to us.

“Before they took the lead we had 12, 14 chances. They spent the time in defense and had a lot of luck, then they played in the final few minutes.”