Derby d'Italia: Players Who Wore Both Shirts
Italy's most bitter rivalry is also one of its most permeable. Ninety-four footballers have played for both Inter and Juventus.
The journalist Gianni Brera named it the Derby d'Italia. Inter and Juventus do not share a city, yet theirs is the most argued-over rivalry in Italian football. Even so, our database holds 94 footballers who wore both shirts. Less permeable than the Milan derby, far more fluid than Istanbul or Madrid.
2006 changed everything
When the Calciopoli investigation sent Juventus down to Serie B, the squad scattered. Two of them went straight to Inter.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic had joined Juventus from Ajax in 2004 and spent two seasons as their main attacking threat. After the relegation ruling he signed for Inter and won consecutive Serie A titles there. Across his career he wore all three of Milan, Inter and Juventus.
Patrick Vieira followed the same road. He arrived at Juventus from Arsenal in 2005 and played a single season. In 2006 he moved to Inter and stayed four years. For him this was not a choice but the consequence of a squad being dismantled.
Fabio Cannavaro did the reverse. He joined Inter in 2002, moved to Juventus two years later, and after Calciopoli left for Real Madrid, where he won the Ballon d'Or.
Andrea Pirlo
Andrea Pirlo is the strangest entry on the list. He signed for Inter in 1998, never established himself, and was sent out on loan. After ten seasons at Milan he joined Juventus on a free transfer in 2011 and won four Serie A titles.
Inter, Milan and Juventus. He wore all three shirts and was a different footballer in each one: the young man who could not hold down a place at Inter, the deep-lying playmaker at Milan, the metronome at Juventus.
Roberto Baggio
For Roberto Baggio leaving was already traumatic. His 1990 transfer from Fiorentina to Juventus caused riots in Florence. He spent five seasons in Turin, won the Ballon d'Or, then moved to Milan and on to Inter in 1998.
Christian Vieri was Italian football's great wanderer: Juventus, Atlético Madrid, Lazio, Inter, Milan, Fiorentina, Torino, Atalanta. He passed through nearly every major club and no set of supporters ever quite claimed him.
The older generation
The crossings are not new. Roberto Boninsegna moved from Inter to Juventus in the 1970s and won the title in Turin. Alessandro Altobelli, Inter's great centre forward, pulled on the Juventus shirt at the end of his career.
Paulo Sousa owns one of the odder résumés in Europe. He played for Benfica and Sporting, then for Juventus and Inter, crossing both the Lisbon line and the Turin-Milan one.
From the modern era, Lúcio and Dani Osvaldo also belong on the list.
Why is it possible?
In Italy a transfer may feel like betrayal in the stands, but for clubs it is ordinary business. The two also competed at the same level for decades, so moving between them was never a step down.
The tension is real all the same. The moves of Ibrahimovic and Vieira were argued over in Turin for years, and the success Pirlo found at Juventus is still a sore memory at Milan.
How the number breaks down
Ninety-four looks large until you split it by era.
A significant share of these footballers played between 1930 and 1970. Giuliano Sarti, Franco Causio, Pietro Anastasi, Romeo Benetti and Erminio Favalli belong to a period when a transfer did not carry the symbolic weight it does now. Changing clubs was not a personal matter for the supporter in the way it became later.
In the modern era, from 1990 onwards, far fewer men have worn both shirts. The derby hardened over time. As television money grew, as supporter identity sharpened and as transfers became more visible, the cost of crossing went up.
What it means in the game
When Inter × Juventus comes up in Common you have a deep pool, but most of it is old. Anyone who follows the modern game can reach for Ibrahimovic, Vieira, Cannavaro, Pirlo, Baggio and Vieri quickly. Six names cover most rounds.
Longer rounds get harder fast. After Lúcio and Osvaldo you have to drop into the 1970s, and beyond Boninsegna and Altobelli the names stop being familiar.
That makes this fixture one of the easiest rounds to start and one of the hardest to finish.
Inter × Juventus is one of the richer rounds in Common.