The Piazza del Duomo, between its numbers 22 and 20, is today occupied by a few businesses of different kinds: a bar-restaurant clearly oriented to the tourists that abound in this area, around the Milan Cathedral; a healthy cafeteria; a cosmetics store; another of sports equipment; a wine cellar …
But at the beginning of the 20th century, all that space was occupied by the enormous Ristorante L'Orologio, El Reloj, in honor of the one on the corner of it. The images of the time draw a stately atmosphere in the heart of the capital of Lombardy, with its immense terrace occupying a good part of the street, and history books point to the restaurant as the cradle in which Inter, the rival of Real Madrid tonight, was born.
It happened on March 9, 1908, around midnight. Italy boiled around the debate over the use of foreigners in soccer; the same foreigners who had introduced football into the country were now rejected by the Italian Federation, which had practiced a nationalist policy in which the presence of these foreign players had no place. The conflict was served and it reached AC Milan (then still called Milan Cricket and Football Club), which made the decision not to participate in the championships of the 1907-08 season as a protest.
But he ended up reaching an agreement with the Federation committing not to register new foreign players, although keeping those already present. This collusion with Federation politics irritated several Milan members, led by the painter Giorgio Muggiani. The group, of 44 dissidents, met on the night of March 9, 1908 to found, at 11:30 p.m., the Football Club Internazionale; from its own name, Inter declared its clear globalist vocation and its intention to fight for the right of outsiders to play.
Inter was born against Milan
In the same L'Orologio the founding document was drawn up and Muggiani designed the shield: black and blue in the closed night that had witnessed that moment and a golden background by the stars of the firmament. Although years later it was revealed that the choice of blue was to contrast with the red of Milan. With Inter, the great rivalry of northern Italy was also born.
“The maximum goodwill and the best purposes are the foundations of the new company, which for now promises few but good things. The main objective of the new club is to facilitate the exercise of football for foreigners residing in Milan and spread the passion among the Milanese youth”, The club published in Gazzetta Sportiva days later. Today there is no trace of the restaurant, nor of the iconic clock that gave it its name, but the tifosi interistas know that it all started in L’Orologio.