Ahead of Sunday night's Derby della Madonnina, Football Italia looks back at one of the more controversial ties between Inter and Milan.
“Poison! Poison!” was the cry.
The shouts reverberated around San Siro as the outraged Milanese pointed, gesticulated and threatened. “Poison!”, “Mother of God, the lemon! The lemon!” With these bizarre words and accusations ignored by the referee, Tito Cucchiaroni stepped up and, to his surprise, sent the ball flying over the crossbar and into the stands. He looked baffled by the ball’s trajectory and as the shouts of “poison” continued, the Derby of the Lemon was born.
The season is the 1957-58 campaign and Juventus would be crowned champions, Napoli being the only team to coming close to challenging them. Both Milan clubs were to end the campaign in mid-table obscurity, but they were not to know this as they faced off in the Derby Della Madonnina, only the fifth game of the campaign. As the match rumbled on in a febrile atmosphere the referee, Concetto Lo Bello, would have been satisfied with the fact that the game itself had been uneventful. He perhaps wasn’t ready for what Benito Lorenzi had in store.
Lorenzi had been signed by Inter in 1947 from Empoli for 12m Lire. The attacking style he brought and his die-hard nature made him a fans favourite and he netted 138 times in his 300 outings for the club, surprisingly only getting 14 games for the Azzurri. He was an unpredictable footballer, always with a lot to say and he showed a huge desire to win. His mother had given him a nickname of ‘Veleno’ ['poison'] for his liveliness and it was a name the Rossoneri would never forget.
So it came to be, that on that day in 1957 with the game offering little but a glimpse into what their seasons would become, ‘Veleno’ would strike. Lorenzi went down in the Milan box and by all accounts of the day it looked a clear penalty but the mischievous nature of the man fouled caused the Milan fans to curse his name. Defender Guido Vincenzi, promptly dispatched the kick and the Nerazzurri decided, as was the style back then, that they would shut up shop and see out the final 36 minutes of the game.
Perhaps Inter hadn’t settled from their celebrations, as only three minutes later, defender Giorgio Bernardini fouled Milan’s Pepe Schiaffino and referee Lo Bello had no problem awarding a second spot kick. The Inter players were flabbergasted with the decision and surrounded the referee to the point where it looked like the game may go out of control. Even so, Lo Bello stuck to his decision but could not get the home team players to stand down. Under Milan’s Curva, the Rossoneri fans added fuel to the fire, cheering frantically about the decision, it was then that it happened.
Lorenzi hadn’t taken part in the protests, he had instead gone to the water and lemons thrown onto the pitch for refreshment. It was then, while sucking on a lemon, he had an idea that would go down in history.
“Walking with the lemon in my hand, I saw that Cucchiaroni was looking at the referee to his right," Benito later explained. "I instinctively took a lemon and put it under the ball. The Milan fans, Mother of God how they were shouting! 'The Lemon, the lemon!' Cucchiaroni took the kick and it missed the target by six metres. The match finished and we won 1-0. I flew off quickly because lots of the fans wanted to jump onto the pitch and so I got into the changing rooms straight away”.
Witnesses claim that straight after the miss, with the chants of “Poison” still ringing from the stands, Lorenzi hugged his goalkeeper and whilst the celebrations were going on, he nonchalantly kicked away the lemon skin. The game eventually erupted to the point where a brawl started on the way to the changing rooms but Benito had already gone.
Perhaps the most iconic line in all of this, was that years later Lorenzi did confess all - to a priest. The priest quickly forgave him and not without a chuckle: the clergyman was also an Inter fan.