Ruben Amorim watched the greatest football team on earth from his living room in Lisbon, squinting at a VHS tape. Paolo Maldini sweeping across the back line. Franco Baresi reading the game before it happened. Ruud Gullit doing things that had no business being done on a football pitch. That Milan side lodged itself somewhere deep in the boy's chest, alongside Benfica, alongside the smell of the old Estádio da Luz where his father changed his nappies in the stands. Thirty-something years later, on a Saturday afternoon at the San Siro, Amorim got his first Milan derby. He won it 3-1. If you want a single image that captures what this Serie A season is becoming, that scoreline is a decent place to start.
The Promise He Made To Himself
Back in 2017, Amorim told a Portuguese newspaper exactly what he was going to do. "My childhood dreams were to play for Benfica and Milan," he said. "I've fulfilled one. Now I suppose I'll have to become a coach for the other." That is the kind of quote that gets filed away and forgotten. Amorim did not forget it. When he arrived at Milanello this past June, nine years after saying it publicly, he was not just starting a new job. He was cashing in a debt to his younger self.
This matters because it reframes the whole narrative around his move. The easy read was that Milan was an escape hatch after a bruising chapter at Manchester United, a man grateful for the exit. And yes, Milan's owners did back him to the tune of more than €160 million on transfers in the summer window, which softens any landing considerably. But watching Amorim in that dugout, composed while the San Siro lost its mind around him on Saturday, you saw something different. You saw a man who felt he was exactly where he was supposed to be.
What He Inherited, And What He's Built
The Milan he took over in June was not the continental juggernaut from the tapes. This was a club that had missed out on Champions League football for a second consecutive season. Rafael Leão, the player who was supposed to define this era at the club, was on his way out with the question of his unfulfilled potential hanging over the whole project. The gap between mythology and reality was steep.
Amorim has not entirely closed it yet. Gonçalo Ramos, the club's record signing and a player who cost more than €73 million from Paris Saint-Germain, has only scored twice in ten starts. He drifts deep when his team needs him to hold a line inside the box, and the question of whether he genuinely fits Amorim's system remains open. Even Saturday's win produced its own tactical puzzle: Diego Moreira, a right wing-back, was regularly operating in a higher position on the pitch than the centre-forward. That is an interesting detail to sit with.
A Night Built In The Training Ground
The 3-1 win did not happen by accident. It was engineered. Amorim had deliberately rested Luka Modric and Christian Pulisic for the midweek loss to Bologna, bringing them on only as second-half substitutes, keeping them fresh for the derby. Several other players who had not even been fit enough for a spot on the Bologna bench, including Mario Gila, Adrien Rabiot and Diego Moreira, all started against Inter. If that Bologna defeat was partly a calculated sacrifice, it worked.
His most audacious call was naming Sankhoun Diawara, a 20-year-old whose only previous Milan start had come at centre-back, as his left wing-back in a 3-4-2-1. That kind of decision only comes from genuine conviction in your own system, and it paid dividends almost immediately. Pulisic headed Milan in front after just four minutes, the culmination of nearly 90 seconds of unbroken possession, with Moreira's delivery finding him perfectly. Six minutes later, Rabiot flicked in a second from a corner using a rehearsed routine that had Diawara crossing paths with him to block Hakan Calhanoglu's tracking run. You don't score a goal like that without hours on the training pitch. Inter's defending was poor, but Milan made it look that way on purpose.
Inter's Crisis And The Opportunity Amorim Took
It would be dishonest to write about this result without acknowledging that Cristian Chivu had an availability nightmare going into the game. Lautaro Martínez had been out for weeks with a hamstring strain. Francesco Pio Esposito and Ange-Yoan Bonny were both unfit to start after a virus swept through the squad. Chivu responded by shifting Andy Diouf, a midfielder who had been thriving at wing-back, up front to play alongside Marcus Thuram. Inter never looked comfortable. Milan looked like they had been playing this exact game for months.
Moreira was the man of the moment. The 20-year-old, signed from Strasbourg for more than €50 million in the summer, had been promising without quite justifying that fee. On Saturday he delivered in every moment that counted, and then, when Milan won a free-kick 20 yards out and Modric moved to take it, Moreira asked for the ball instead. He whipped a left-footed effort over the wall and into the net. That is the kind of confidence that either looks ridiculous or becomes the making of you. For Moreira, on this evidence, it is the latter.
Serie A Is Having Its Moment, And Milan Are In The Middle Of It
Amorim's win fits inside a broader story that deserves its own attention. Serie A currently averages 3.18 goals per game this season, and through nearly ten completed rounds there have been exactly two goalless draws. That is a remarkable number. The old caricature of Italian football, all cynical defending and tedious midfield chess, is so outdated it is almost embarrassing to mention. The league that Amorim loved as a boy, the one where calcio was king and the Champions League belonged to Italian clubs by right, is not back in the same way, not yet. No Italian side has won the Champions League since 2010. But it is at least interesting again, loud and attacking and worth watching on a Saturday afternoon.
Amorim is not blind to the distance still to travel. After the derby he told reporters that Milan had been good, not great, and reminded everyone that three points from beating Inter counts the same as three points against any other team. [He has spent long enough in difficult environments]((/uprise/football/one-horse-one-handshake-twenty-one-years-of-ruin)) to know what overconfidence costs. The collapse to Bologna four days earlier, conceding three in the second half after leading at the break, is a more accurate data point about where this Milan side truly is than a single demolition of their city rivals.
The Verdict: Good Enough Is Not Enough, But This Matters
Amorim is right to keep the temperature down. Inter had dropped just two points all season before Saturday. They had come from 2-0 down to rescue results three times already this campaign. Their squad, reinforced in the summer with Curtis Jones, John Stones and Djed Spence, is the deepest in the division. One defeat does not change that picture fundamentally, and Milan still have real questions to answer about their attacking structure and Ramos's role within it.
But what Saturday did was remind everyone, including Amorim's own players, that this project has genuine belief at its core. A manager who carried this club in his chest through childhood, who publicly committed to coaching here years before it was a realistic possibility, who kept his best players fresh for this specific match and then designed a performance around rehearsed set pieces and a 20-year-old wing-back playing out of position. That is not a lucky win. That is a manager doing exactly what he came to do. The boy who watched those VHS tapes in Lisbon is not finished yet.