FC Inter at UCLA for Preseason Training

The Top Italian Soccer Team is in the USA for a Tournament

Jul 21, 2009 Alessandro Mastrorocco

For the first time in its history FC Inter Milan is having their pre-season training and presenting of its new kit outside Italy.

Founded in 1908, FC Inter is one of the most important historic clubs in the world of soccer.

It has always played in the top Italian league, the “serie A”, winning 17 titles, two Champions League titles and two Intercontinental Cup titles consecutively.

Its coach, the Portuguese and charismatic Josè Mourinho, is one of the most appreciated coaches of the world. Mourinho is very similar to the most famous FC Inter trainer, Helenio Herrera, named the wizard by the supporters and a true legend of soccer. The players are from more than eleven different countries, all of them are key players for their national teams in the most important competitions.

FC Internazionale Milano was born for this reason: to be a team made up of players from all over the world, which was also the reason for the secession of Inter’s founders from AC Milan that preferred to be a team composed of only Italian players.

The team is also conducting a socio-cultural program to assist kids who live in a difficult situation.

FC Inter At UCLA to Prepare the Assault on the Champions League

For the first time in its one hundred year history FC Inter Milan has decided to have its pre-seasonal training abroad and very far from the Alps, which is the traditional location where in the summer Italian soccer teams generally prepare themselves to approach the National League and European Champions League that starts in September.

This year the four-time consecutive winners of the “Scudetto”, the prize for the Italian National League champion, have chosen the USA to start the season. Their target this year is to win the coveted European soccer prize, the Champions League. It has been forty years since they last held that title.

The campus of UCLA, the University of Los Angeles, is the new home of the “Neroazzurri”.

The Black and blue are the team from Milan’s colors, that on the field and in the famed Pauley Pavilion, the indoor basketball arena where the men's basketball team of UCLA, named the Bruins, won ten NCAA championships, are trying to find the way to regain the top position in Europe after having achieved it in Italy.

Aside from the technical consideration, the campus of UCLA is probably one of the best places to train a team and there are also economical reasons. The “Great Inter” of the ’60s built by Angelo Moratti, the father of the present president of FC Inter, tried to build a vast sport business market in the USA without much success. The USA, with regards to supporters and sponsors, was not ready for Soccer on the level that it is in Europe.

Now the Neroazzurri in their work to gain new fans all around the world and gain new economic resources are looking again to the USA as the appropriate country to build up its assets to challenge the Spanish and British teams.

The Show to Launch the New Kit Organized by Nike and the Tournament

Another first in its history, FC Inter also launched the new kit outside of Italy.

The presentation of the new kit was in Hollywood at the Ricardo Montalbán Theatre in an appealing Oscar-style ceremony where players arrived at the theatre like movie stars, stepping out of Limousines and walking on a black and blue carpet.

The hosts of the event were the California sports radio celebrity Matt 'Money' Smith and the Nike soccer vice president Bert Hoyt who declared to be proud to be associated with a club with an incredible tradition like FC Inter has.

FC Inter will participate in a tournament, the World Football Challenge, during its training in the USA with the Londoners of Chelsea FC, the Mexicans of Club America and the Italians of AC Milan. On Sunday the 19th of July the Nerazzurri will play against Club America in Palo Alto, CA, on Tuesday the 21st against Chelsea FC at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, CA and then on Sunday the 26th against AC Milan at Foxborough Stadium in Boston, MA.

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