Lowdown on Inter

Full Name: FC Internazionale Milano (from 1928-'46, the club was called "Ambrosiana")

Founded: 1908.

Distinguishing features: Immediate and fierce rivalry with the other Milan club, AC Milan, since it was founded by a 45-strong breakaway group of dissident AC Milan members who objected to the way the club was being run.

Political history: Under Mussolini's dictatorship, fascist laws forced the club to change name to Ambrosiana in 1928 in order to drop the "foreign" associations of their Internazionale title.

Titles: 13 - Italian League titles (last time in 1989), 3 - Italian Cups, 2 - European Cups ('64, '65), 2 - Intercon tinental Cups ('64, '65), 3 - UEFA Cups ('91, '94, '98)

European record: Immensely experienced European campaigners, Inter have missed out on European club competition in only four of the last 44 seasons and only once in the last 23 seasons.

Home ground: Guiseppe Meazza, San Siro, Milan.

Capacity: 85,500.

Owner/president: Massimo Moratti

Coach: Mircea Lucescu (Romania). Former Romanian national coach, exDinamo Bucharest and Brescia, joined Inter in December '98 after sacking of Gigi Simoni.

Sponsors: Pirelli, Nike

Internet address: www.inter.it

History in European competition: Inter's return to the Champions League this season rekindles memories of the good old days of the mid'60s when an Inter team dominated by defender Giacinto Facchetti, inside forward Sandro Mazzola and midfielders Mario Corso and Spaniard Luis Suarez dominated European and world club soccer, winning both the European and Intercontinental Cups in back-to-back seasons in 1964 and 1965.

Coached by Helenio Herrera, that Inter team introduced the world to a refined version of catenaccio i.e. traditionally tight, defensive Italian soccer in which the defence soaked up everything the opposition could throw at it and then struck back on the counterattack to win the game, seemingly against the run of play.

Older Glasgow Celtic fans will probably recall this side only too well since Celtic's 2-1 defeat of Inter in the 1967 European Cup final in Lisbon ended Inter's run of success in the '60s. Inter fans had to wait another 20 years until 1989 for serious success when a side marshalled by German midfield general Lothar Matthaeus and coached by the experienced Giovanni Trapattoni won the Italian title.

Inter fortunes revived in the mid-90s when the Moratti family, which had owned the club during the halcyon days of the '60s, regained control. Current owner, petrol millionaire Massimo Moratti, is a son of the '60s club president, Angelo Moratti, and he reaped the first rewards of mammoth investment (not least the $100 million plus long-term investment in Ronaldo, below) when Inter beat fellow Italian club Lazio in last May's UEFA Cup final in Paris.