Federico Di Marco’s 2025/26 for Inter Milan in numbers

Matches played: 47

Goals: 8

Assists: 18

Tackles won: 1.7 per 90

Defensive contributions: 113

Chances created: 96

Big chances created: 33

The slow build  

Some players explode into our consciousness. A teenage sensation. An instant wunderkind. For others it’s a slow, steady build to the top.

Federico DiMarco definitely falls into the latter category.

Not that the Milanese ‘quinto’ (a wide midfielder or wing-back in Italian football) did not impress on his journey to becoming one of the finest of his ilk in the world. Or indeed, have his moments.

In September 2018, playing for Parma on loan against his parent club at the San Siro he scored the only goal of the contest. It was his first Serie A strike.

Post-match, there must have been a feeling of validation for the player who, to that juncture, had never been given a proper chance at Inter Milan.  

He had made his way through the Nerazzurri youth ranks and was handed a couple of cameo appearances off the bench in this teenage years, but the club felt it was best for his development to be loaned to Ascoli, then Empoli.

On his return from Tuscany, Inter sold their homegrown talent to Sion in Switzerland before realising a year later they had made a mistake and bought him back.

They then promptly loaned him out again, to Parma for a season and, later, to Verona for another campaign.

All of which adds up to the suggestion that Inter valued their academy star, but did not need him. They appreciated his qualities but contrarily deemed him surplus to requirements.

It should not be underestimated the degree of resilience required to turn that established narrative around.

A nadir under the world’s gaze

For three seasons running now DiMarco has been selected for the Serie A Team of the Year. In May he was awarded the Serie A Player of the Season merit after playing an instrumental role in Inter securing a second Scudetto in three years.

Putting in excellent showings each and every week, in addition to his defensive contributions down the left flank the 28-year-old also offered plenty of impactful attacking impetus, breaking a league record for assists into the bargain.

Against Bodø/Glimt in the Champions League last February, he racked up a remarkable nine key passes.

But before we detail his season to remember, it’s worth revisiting another example of the player’s fortitude. Another example of inverting a narrative.

It is half-time at the Champions League final of 2025.

PSG have been dominant across the entirety of the first-half, and can consider themselves unfortunate to only be two goals up. Inter Milan are flailing.

The world’s pundits gather in their studios and all identify DiMarco as Inter’s weak link. He is widely blamed for both goals and has struggled to deal with the twin threat of Désiré Doué and Achraf Hakimi throughout.He

Corriere dello Sport call his performance a ‘horrorshow’. Gaol.com went with ‘disaster-class’.

DiMarco is substituted in the 53rd minute, his head bowed.

This happens, of course. This happens to every player, great, good or average.

But after posting a series of noteworthy displays throughout 2024/25, the Italian reserved his surprising nadir for when an audience of 20 million-plus was watching.

 

For DiMarco it was a rare instance of bad timing.

A provider supreme

To come back last season and play like he did is a testament to the player’s character. A testament to his strength of self.

He began his assisting early, floating over a pinpoint corner against Juventus a few weeks into a campaign that had the Nerazzurri desperate to reclaim their champions tag.

He followed that up with two assists in consecutive matchweeks, at the expense of Cagliari and Cremonese, who he also scored against.

Both came via underlaps into space and low, hard deliveries across the six yard box.

It wasn’t long before Papu Gómez’s Serie A record of 16 assists came up in conversation, the Atalanta winger reaching the tally in 2019/20. A hat-trick of assists versus Sassuolo in early February took DiMarco to 13 with 14 games still to play.

The record was broken away to Torino in April, the benefactor of his service, Marcus Thuram, polishing the wing-back’s boot in celebration.

When assessing DiMarco’s 18 assists – double the amount of his nearest rival in this regard – a couple of aspects jump out.

The volume of corners is one, six in total, representing a third of his haul. Such was his accuracy from set-pieces they were compared in some quarters to penalty kicks.

Four of his assists – 22% - were for Thuram, who also had a stand-out campaign, scoring 18 goals across all competitions.

It’s additionally hard not to be struck by the arc and pace of DiMarco’s deliveries. The whip. And that, more times than not, he did not merely direct the ball into an area, but instead picked out his target.

A last, but pertinent, point is to highlight that the player’s creativity extended far beyond record-breaking, headline-making goal contributions.

Across the Serie A season, he carved out 96 chances, twenty more than any other player in the Italian top-flight.