MILAN - Facts, figures and previous meetings: we delve a little deeper into tonight's match which sees Inter take on Tottenham at 19:00. These statistics are courtesy of our friends at Football Data.
Rodrigo Palacio, with seven strikes in this season's Europa League, goes in search of Roberto Boninsegna's record of the most goals in a single edition of the Fairs Cup/UEFA Cup/Europa League. The man from Mantova hit nine in the 1969/70 season.
Inter will try to follow the trend in a week of great comebacks: Italian club sides have trailed 3-0 from the first leg away from home on nine occasions in the past. Seven of those sides went out, but Bologna in 1990/91 and Parma in 1995/96 both went through. The Rossoblu had the better of Admira Wacker Mödling in the UEFA Cup last 16, winning the second leg 3-0 at the Stadio Dall'Ara and going through 6-5 on penalties. Five years later, Parma were beaten 3-0 by Halmstad in the Cup Winners' Cup, but managed to turn it around at the Stadio Tardini, seeing off the Swedes thanks to a 4-0 return leg victory.
Until last week's 3-0 win over the Nerazzurri, Tottenham hadn't scored
against Italian opposition in a competitive match since a 1-0 win over
AC Milan at the San Siro on 15 February 2011 in the Champions League
last 16: Crouch with the goal on 80 minutes. The remaining ten minutes
of that match, plus three goalless draws against AC Milan (the second
leg of that tie) and Lazio (the two games in this season's Europa
League), saw Spurs go more than 280 minutes without finding the net
against Italian opponents.
Spurs haven't lost in Europe since 30 November 2011 when they succumbed 2-1 at home to PAOK Thessaloniki: since then the English side have won five and drawn five.
The referee, Croat Ivan Babek, 36, an international official since 2003, takes charge of Inter for the first time and an Italian side for the fifth time in European football: all of the four previous matches have been won by the Italian team. He has overseen two fixtures involving English clubs, both away from home: one win and one loss.
This is the fourth time Inter and Tottenham have met: there has never been a draw - Tottenham have scored three in each of their previous encounters - and the team playing at home has always emerged victorious. Inter have won one, Spurs two and the English team have scored nine goals in that time.
The Nerazzurri have played English opposition on 33 occasions in Europe, recording 12 wins, six draws and 15 defeats. Inter host an English team for the 17th time and have so far managed eight wins, five draws and three losses. Add to that four matches in the Anglo-Italian Cup: one win apiece and two draws.
Spurs come up against Italian opposition for the 11th time, having won four, drawn four and lost two in the past. Tottenham travel to Italy for the sixth time in Europe, and have only won once in the past (1-0 over AC Milan in the Champions League on 15 February 2011), drawing two and losing on two occasions. Spurs also won their two matches in the Anglo-Italian League Cup.
