Inter Milan and Murder by Design
The biggest clubs in the world want to get bigger. They're doing it by shedding their history.
Logos change all the time. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Let’s just get that out of the way first.
One of my absolute favorite logo switches ever is Roma’s Wolf head that they wore throughout the 80s and most of the 90s. An updated version of their original 1927 logo, the one that that tells the founding myth of Rome with Romulus and Remus being nursed by a mother wolf, made its triumphant return near the turn of the 21st century. But the wolf head still gets some love every now and then, and even back then, wasn’t so far away from the original crest that you couldn’t trace a line connecting the two. It was a significant style shift that still paid homage to the past, where the club had come from, represented symbolically by design.
Ok. Let’s talk about Inter Milan.
The logo re-design that launched a thousand memes is one with a pretty direct purpose, one that we’ve seen before: get brand recognition outside of the market you dominate. Become something greater than just a football club. Compete with Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, and everyone in England for a share of the international soccer pie.
This is fairly directly what Juventus did when they changed their logo to the much-maligned “J.” They wanted to be more than just a football club. They wanted to be a brand, they wanted to be something that was visually appealing and on the cutting edge of fashion, they wanted to expand beyond the reach of Italy and the realm of soccer fandom, in general, to the reaches of the world not yet fully taken by the game, something outside of sport entirely. I know this because I talked to Adidas’ Director of Design about it. And they did that by making their logo a J, and by releasing kits with hand-painted stripes and orange, RealTree-looking camouflage.
I’m inclined to believe Inter Milan is attempting much the same thing with this re-design. It’s not for Inter fans, and it’s not for people who pay much attention to soccer in general. The Inter crest is one of the most instantly recognizable ones in the sport. It’s an appeal to those outside the sport, the fandoms, the worlds which we normally traffic in when we talk about the game. And to that extent, it suffers from the same over-simplification the Juve J does, or most fashion brands in general today succumb to. The clean, the plain, the hyper-obvious. Make fun of Virgil Abloh all you want, he generally deserves it, but you can’t say that he didn’t see all of this coming a mile away.
The main issue I take with Inter ditching their old crest is that their old crest was so good. It was so good that the design Inter used in 2020 was virtually the same design they used in 1908.
There have been other logos and design changes made over the course of a century to the Inter design, sure. How could there not be? The fascists forced Inter to change its name in the ‘30s, and the crest changed with it. They dabbled in different designs in the ‘60s, and the ‘80s saw the serpent crest take hold for a while. But none of those different crests seemed to last very long. It always came back to this one: four letters interlocking. The name of the club, through it all. Football Club Internazionale Milano.
Something about the crest re-design feels like a killing to me, unlike the skin-shedding process that these club crests are constantly going through. It feels like by dumbing down the crest to the most important initials, Inter are cutting themselves off from their history in a way that’s all too common in today’s game. Clubs are no longer clubs, they’re brands.
Perhaps that’s just the natural order of things. Inter certainly aren’t the only club to do it. But I can still find the time to mourn the loss of one of the game’s great symbols, to be replaced by its Helvetica second cousin. It’s the least it deserves.
Jozy Re-Loaded
After yesterday’s great Twitter meltdown, it appears that today might be much the same!
Clearly, the man had some things to get off his chest. And while many people didn’t like the way he went about it, it’s pretty clear he’s not going to let the issue drop.
Things You Should Know
Crystal Dunn is one of the best soccer players in the world, not to mention the United States, and it’s time that you know it.
Ronaldo’s quest to transform Real Valladolid is just the latest chapter in a career that deserves far more respect than it gets.
We have a show today! Surprise! Starts at 3 EST/12 PST
Every now and then, we let our favorite questionably-legal bookie tell us who he’s going with on the weekend. Enjoy some free advice.
The moon was a giant silver poker chip over the Gowanus canal as I strolled home from the smoke shop last night where I had happily converted the results of leaning hard on PAC12 teams the last few weeks into some gorgeous additions to my walk-in humidor. I guess it’s now a “crouch so you don’t hit your head on a pile of two-by-fours” humidor. Why do I need a deck when my 40 square feet of Brooklyn backyard is paved? Buddy if you’re asking that question, you never lived in this sweaty city.
I stowed my puros and tugged the chain on the desk lamp as I settled into the folding chair in the garage and surveyed my kingdom-in-exile in the two car. A fresh stack of twenties sat next to my keyboard, courtesy of Chelsea showing out vs Atletico. Shorter than it should’ve been since Real Madrid decided to wake up and kick around Atalanta, but soccer is still in the black in my ledger.
This week I’m looking at two matches in the Premiere (that’s how we spell it here) League with promising opportunities. In Arsenal vs. Liverpool, the thinking man looks past the scoreline and leans into the return of Bobby Firmino to the lineup for Liverpool and Arsenal’s penchant for scoring goals like Fat Bobby eats cannolis. Total goals +2.5 (-140 odds) is playing with house money. Taking the draw at +265 is also an attractive option, and I’ll be laying Ben Franklin down both ways. Two teams that wear red are gonna send Jimmy well into the black. Aston Villa notching a W vs. Fulham is the other line I’m sniffing around this week. Villa likely gets back team leader Jack Grealish this week, and takes home field advantage against a Fulham side that has struggled to score at all this season. The draw line looks attractive as Fulham have actually dropped only 4 matches away from home, but their recent form has been more 2017 Cleveland Browns than 2018 Cleveland Browns. I’m throwing another kite flyer at that +128 to win for Villa. Now tell your story walking.
Ledger up $118
Goal of the Day
Listen, if you’re North Macedonia and you’re beating Germany, you’re going to get goal of the day.
But also, pretty tidy goal!