Consider this a preemptive apology. Yes, we call Manchester City’s opponents in the Champions League final Inter Milan. Yes, I know that’s not what the team is called.
Intel nomenclature issues are always complicated. The club’s official title, FC Internazionale Milano, tells the story of its founding. In his early footballing years in Italy before World War I, his AC Milan side, the city’s top team, had a policy of using only native players. Some members objected. When the problem could not be resolved, they became independent and started their own international association.
With one exception, UEFA, the governing body of European football, always uses the club’s proper name in its polysyllabic glory, but no one uses that title anywhere. In Italy, the club is officially called Internazionale and colloquially Inter. The team’s social media accounts have also followed suit. twitter, Instagram and tick tockspecified by the handle @inter.
Certainly, that’s the thinking of the club itself. In 2014, the club filed a trademark application for the word ‘Inter’ in the United States, an application that would later lead to years of legal disputes with emerging majors. League football teams, teams such as Inter Miami.
The problem is that simply saying “Intel” doesn’t make sense outside of Italy. Especially in the English-speaking world, it is common to refer to the club as ‘Inter Milan’. No one can guess why this treaty stuck. Perhaps this is a valiant attempt to transliterate the club’s full name. Maybe to distinguish it from the Brazilian team Internacional.
Or, like two teams that have met the same fate, Sporting Clube de Portugal, erroneously known as Sporting Lisbon, and Athletic Club, forced to bear the name of Athletic Bilbao, any English speaker should: It may be more comfortable if you know. Precisely where something is. (In any case, of course, Fussball-Club Bayern München is only half-translated. Putting it in Munich is enough. Nobody needs to know that it’s in Bavaria too.)
Like Sporting and Athletic, Inter have at least some resentment over the naming issue, but in recent years seem to have acquiesced to some degree of the inevitable.
When we commissioned German design firm Bülow Borscht to redesign the badge in 2021 (now known as the process of creating a new “visual identity” for some reason), we decided to move from the original iconic logo to the “F ” and the letters “C” have been removed. The logo leaves only his two, “I” and “M”. Of course, they represent Internazionale Milano. Inter Milan in English.
