Such is coverage of the modern game these days, everything Inter accomplished in the competition last season \u2014 the win against Arsenal in the league phase, the quarter-final defeat of Bayern, beating Barcelona in the semis \u2014 was diminished as a fluke, as if reaching the Champions League final for the second time in three years was, once again, a case of remarkable luck when the road to it was as hard as the path to the 2023 edition was supposedly \u2018easy\u2019.<\/p>\n
Dimarco\u2019s standing suffered, too. He was belittled, as were his team-mates. They were judged on one very bad night when the world was watching, not the year. Not over careers.<\/p>\n
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\n Federico Dimarco celebrates scoring against Dortmund in the Champions League last month (Stuart Franklin\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
How Dimarco has come back from that disappointment is one of the stories of the season in Serie A.<\/p>\n
If Inter reclaim the title they relinquished to Napoli on the final day of last season, much of the credit will go to him.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe I\u2019m getting carried away, but do you feel like the best \u2018fifth\u2019 in the world right now?\u201d DAZN reporter Giovanni Barsotti asked Dimarco at Sassuolo\u2019s foggy Mapei Stadium. The No 1 fifth in football \u2014 outstanding among the players who make a back five a fantastic five, a mid-five, a front-five; the flying wing-backs!<\/p>\n
While AI-generated memes on X<\/a> reimagined Dimarco as Marcelo in a Real Madrid jersey, he humbly replied: \u201cI feel like nobody.\u201d<\/p>\n And yet Dimarco had been involved in five memorable moments on the night; a goal-line block on Ismael Kone at 0-0, a corner that landed on Yann Bisseck\u2019s head for the opener, a free kick that hit the crossbar, a cross for Marcus Thuram to steer home and double that lead, another corner for Manuel Akanji\u2019s first goal in an Inter shirt, making it four. Dimarco, for the hell of it, tried to score direct from a corner<\/a>. He even tried a shot from the halfway line.<\/p>\n You\u2019ll note the decisiveness from set pieces.<\/p>\n Hakan Calhanoglu\u2019s intermittent presence this season has forced Inter to wean themselves off a years-long dependency on the Turkey midfielder. Piotr Zielinski has covered for him, when needed, as a deep-lying playmaker and their designated penalty taker. Dimarco has assumed responsibility for other dead-ball situations.<\/p>\n Inter have scored 13 goals from corners this season; Juventus, who are second on the list, have almost half that figure. Even Lautaro Martinez\u2019s 14th league goal of the season came from a long throw-in that got flicked on by Thuram. Serie A may not yet be the set-piece-filled Premier League (even if an Italian banker, Gianni Vio, was the original set-piece specialist) but Inter do appear to have learnt from their recent Champions League meeting with Arsenal.<\/p>\n When Dimarco turned to the dugout as if to credit one of coach Cristian Chivu\u2019s assistants Angelo Palombo with a corner routine, Sky Italia\u2019s touchline reporter Matteo Barzaghi claimed to overhear Chivu say: \u201cIt\u2019s not a corner, it\u2019s a penalty.\u201d Only in this instance, the spot was out by the flag.<\/p>\n This trend under Chivu still doesn\u2019t tell the whole Dimarco story.<\/p>\n He is up to 11 assists for the season, nearly double the tally of the next best creator in Serie A (Nico Paz of Como) and already close to the record by a \u2018defender\u2019 in the division (13 by Massimo Oddo for Lazio 20 years ago) with 14 games remaining. The number of chances he has created (62!) is far and away the most in Serie A (13 more than Kenan Yildiz of Juventus and 22 ahead of Paz, who are both No 10s).<\/p>\n It calls to mind an observation made by Antonio Gagliardi, a former instructor at the Italian Football Federation and assistant to Roberto Mancini (Saudi Arabia), Andrea Pirlo (Juve) and Chivu (Parma), that the modern game is less about positions and roles and more about a player\u2019s function in their team.<\/p>\n \n Dimarco is a potent attacking force for Inter (Piero Cruciatti\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n In other words, being a team\u2019s creator isn\u2019t limited to a specific area of the pitch. You don\u2019t have to play through the middle or between the lines of attack and midfield to perform a function long associated with a No 10. Trent Alexander-Arnold showed at Liverpool that you can do it from the zone traditionally linked with the full-back.<\/p>\n Dimarco is proving it can be done as a wing-back, a \u2018fifth\u2019, and given the peculiarity of this position to Italian football, where more teams play variations of 3-5-2 than anywhere else on the planet, he probably is, specifically, the best \u2018quinto\u2019 in the world right now with his darting, undercutting runs, first-time take-ons and exquisite deliveries.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you do well in football, you\u2019re a fenomeno. When you don\u2019t do well, you\u2019re c**p,\u201d Dimarco said with jaded wisdom. \u201cI\u2019m focusing on my team\u2019s objectives for the season.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Inter are closing in on a third league title in five years.\u00a0 It could be a bid for their fifth in six if results elsewhere had gone differently on the final day of the season in 2022 and 2025.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/GettyImages-2257288610-scaled.jpg\")
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