Champions League goals can be divided in three categories. Firstly, there are the marquee goals, the kind Uefa promote year in, year out on their social media platforms (Zinedine Zidane vs Bayer Leverkusen, Mauro Bressan vs Barcelona, Lionel Messi vs Real Madrid etc.). However, these goals are so over-promoted you get sick of seeing them.
Then you have the second group, which contains goals that are memorable and easy to recall, but not necessarily suffering from overexposure (Dejan Savicevic vs Barcelona, Gareth Bale vs Liverpool, Cristiano Ronaldo vs Juventus).
And lastly, you have the third group, a group containing absolute gems that for one reason or another remain somewhat unknown to the general public and live rent free in the minds of Champions League sages.
Hernan Crespo’s gorgeous header against Ajax in November 2002 belongs firmly in the third group.
The Argentine was in the honeymoon phase with Inter Milan following a very late arrival in August. Crespo had been intent on staying at Lazio, but Ronaldo’s move to Real Madrid forced Inter to sign a replacement for the recent World Cup winner, and Il Valdanito was chosen as the club’s new No 9.
Inter had been keen to keep Ronaldo, fresh off his exploits in Southeast Asia. Yet the Brazilian and then-Inter manager Hector Cuper didn’t get along. Ronaldo, by his own admission, gave president Massimo Moratti an ultimatum: me or Cuper. The club wasn’t big enough for both of them.
Moratti, who always had a weak spot for attacking players, surprisingly decided to keep Cuper. This was likely due to Inter finishing third in Serie A the season prior, yet blowing the Scudetto on the famous ‘5 Maggio’ day (more on that another time). Moreover, Ronaldo had scarcely played for Inter over the past two-and-a-half years and from Moratti’s point of view, there was no guarantee the Brazilian could last a full season in Serie A anymore despite his excellent showing in Japan and South Korea.
So Ronaldo left for Real Madrid, and in Crespo came. And to the Argentine’s credit, his predecessor wasn’t missed.
It took Crespo three games to register his first Serie A goal for Inter, the last in a 4-1 away win against Piacenza. Yet by that time he’d already got off the ground in the Champions League, with a brace against Norwegian side Rosenborg and the winner in the home fixture against Ajax. European nights is where he’d really excel in his first Inter spell.
For a player who was now a veteran of Serie A, Crespo would struggle to replicate his Champions League form domestically. By the time Inter travelled to face Ajax in the return game in the Dutch capital, Crespo had only two goals in the league. However, he had five in the Champions League.
The Inter side of 2002-03 tends to get overlooked due to a lack of silverware, yet under Cuper they were a very decent team. A reportedly dour man off the pitch, Cuper had been the most successful coach Moratti had hired since Gigi Simoni and had forged Inter into a solid, and sometimes spectacular, team.
Crespo joined former Parma teammate Fabio Cannavaro in arriving at San Siro that summer, along with midfield hard-man Mathias Almeyda and once promising talent Domenico Morfeo to what was already a very good Nerazzurri outfit.
In the last season of Uefa’s ill-fated two group stage experiment, Inter faced Ajax on the final day of the first group phase. Under Ronald Koeman, this was an Ajax side containing young talents —and several future Serie A players — like Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Wesley Sneijder, Rafael van der Vaart, Christian Chivu and Andy van der Meyde, with a dash of experience in the shape of Jari Litmanen, back for a second spell at the club where he made his name in the 1990s.
Ajax were fighting it out with Lyon to stay in the competition, and the game against Inter was one they couldn’t afford to lose.
The Dutch side were denied an early goal when Francesco Toldo pulled off a brilliant save to deny Mido from point-blank range with Van der Vaart converting the rebound. However the linesman, wrongly, raised his flag, leaving both Koeman and Van der Vaart confused.
The first half played out without much action, but in a sign of the times, tackles were flying in from both teams. To the surprise of no one, Inter’s Marco Materazzi was in the thick of it.
The second half started with much of the same rhythm of the first: Ajax would attack, and Inter would hit on the counter. Crespo and Vieri had been fed scraps up to this point, but the Argentine gave Inter the lead with a header from a Gigi Di Biagio surge down the right-hand channel. Di Biagio floated a diagonal ball into the box, and Crespo ghosted in behind Nigel de Jong to divert the ball past Australian goalkeeper Joey Didulica.
Yet Crespo was just getting warmed up, and 90 seconds later scored one of the best headers you’ll ever see.
Ajax attacked from the kick off but Inter won back possession down the right-hand side. Sergio Conceicao passed the ball inside to Di Biagio in the Nerazzurri half, and the midfielder played a high ball towards Crespo just inside Ajax’s centre circle.
Followed by De Jong, Crespo smartly throws a dummy, letting the ball run by him for Morfeo. He then turns and sprints towards goal, while Morfeo cushions a header back to him and Vieri makes a diagonal run.
Crespo sees the run and volleys Morfeo’s header with his instep towards his strike partner. The Argentine continues his run while Vieri is running away from goal down the left-hand side. Despite being one of the world’s best strikers at the time, Vieri was more of a finisher and not a creator, more power than technique, yet he floats the most gorgeous cross towards the centre of the penalty box for Crespo.
The Argentine now has to sprint to meet Vieri’s cross, and this helps him generate enough spring to leap high above De Jong, like the proverbial salmon, to head the ball with the side of his head downwards and into the bottom corner of Didulica’s goal. The crash of the ball smacking off the framework of the Ajax goal elevates the brilliance of the goal even more. Majestic.
Valued more for his fox-in-the-box attributes, heading was such an underrated facet of Crespo’s game. Yet the Ajax match is a glorious illustration of just how good he was in the air.
Inter had further chances through Vieri and Di Biagio to increase the lead, with the latter rattling the crossbar with a piledriver of a shot from 30 yards out. However the last goal of the evening came from the home side, who scored a consolation from Van der Vaart via a deflection from Ivan Cordoba with a minute remaining.
Inter topped the group, with Ajax doing enough to qualify along with them due to a better head-to-head with Lyon as the pair finished on eight points.
Crespo scored seven goals in the first group stage alone, which equalled his tally for the entire Serie A campaign. He sparkled in Europe but struggled domestically, in what was his least productive season since arriving in Italy in the summer of 1996.
Yet his lack of goals in the league was covered up by Vieri’s relentless scoring streak. In the last great season of his career, Vieri was at the peak of powers and scored a ludicrous 24 goals from 23 games, an astonishing figure considering Serie A was still considered the best league in the world at the time.
The Italy international won the Capocannoniere award, finishing six goals clear of Parma’s Adrian Mutu.
Crespo would score a further two goals in the second group stage before suffering a serious injury against Modena in January that kept him out for three months. He returned just in time for the resumption of the Champions League, but failed to score in the quarter final games against Valencia or against AC Milan in the semi finals, as Inter were eliminated on away goals despite being at ‘home’.
Inter finished second in Serie A in 2002-03, seven points behind Marcello Lippi’s Juventus. In a watershed moment, Moratti sold Crespo that summer to newly-minted Chelsea, stoking anger from Vieri as to Inter’s lack of ambition. “If the club have to sell Crespo I would prefer they sell me, it would be better if they sold me,” he complained.
“What am I doing here, staying at Inter to finish in second or third or fourth place again?
“What are we doing? Instead of reinforcing we are weakening. Inter sold Ronaldo and in his place bought Crespo and now they are selling him.”
Football was changing. The arrival of Roman Abramovich signalled the beginning of the end for owners like Moratti, who had wealth but not to that level. Soon, transfer fees and wages would increase to a point that Moratti, and even Silvio Berlusconi, could no longer justify.
Vieri would stay for a couple of more years before leaving in the summer of 2005. A year later Crespo would return to San Siro in the black-and-blue, via a loan spell at Milan and two seasons at Chelsea, but would hang around much longer a second time.
Yet the goal against Ajax remains arguably his best in Inter colours. One of the Champions League’s greatest headers.
