Thursday represented a very bright morning for Italian football, or did it?

Clearly, many Italians up and down the peninsula took huge pleasure from Inter Milan's qualification for the Champions League final, a qualification that has come at the end of a truly outstanding campaign, brilliantly masterminded by the Special One, Jose Mourinho.

Over the years, Italians have become accustomed to seeing Serie A teams in the Champions Cup/League final. When Milan won the Champions League in Athens in 2007, that represented the sixth time in the previous 18 years that an Italian side had lifted the trophy whilst on six other occasions the losing finalist had been a Serie A side.

A boost for Serie A

Of course, those were the halcyon days, the Bronze Age era of football before the good ship Premiership emerged to rule all the waves. For that reason, Inter's achievement has been greeted with all the more enthusiasm. After two miserable seasons when Italian clubs failed to make even the semifinals, Inter have clearly given the Italian football movement a badly needed shot in the arm. Or have they?

This is not a question of sour grapes. Your correspondent spent the last week giving a series of British and Irish radio interviews predicting not only that Inter would make the Madrid final but that, furthermore, they will go on to win that final. No, my reflections on what I tend to see as Mourinho's ultimate masterpiece relate to a consideration put to me last month by no less than Marcello Lippi, Italian national team coach.

I was interviewing Lippi on the morning of the Chelsea vs. Inter second round, return leg at Stamford Bridge, a game that Inter went into on a 2-1 San Siro score line that looked distinctly fragile. I had one obvious enough question for Lippi. With Juventus, Fiorentina and Milan already out of the Champions League, will it be a huge disaster for Italian football if Inter also go out, being eliminated by Chelsea tonight?  

Lippi's answer was nothing if not thought-provoking:

"Do you really think that Italian football is represented by Juventus, Fiorentina, Inter and Milan or that English football is represented by Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool? Take the Premiership clubs, they are owned by Americans or Arabs, coached by Frenchmen, Italians and Spaniards, whilst they all have players from all over the world. So what is English about these teams?

"What is Italian about an Inter team that has a Portuguese coach and hardly any Italian players?   Do you know what sides really represent Italian football, teams like Cagliari, Palermo, Genoa and Chievo. These teams are Italian football, they are well-organized, have good coaches and play very good football. Such clubs and the national team are the heart of Italian football.

"If foreigners want to look at Italian football and conclude that it is on the way down because of poor Champions League results, they can do so, but those Champions League clubs are not Italian football, it is something different. These might be Italian teams in one sense but they are not the expression of Italian football. If Inter get beaten in the Champions League without even a single Italian on the pitch, is that a defeat for Italian football?"

By the same token, then, I would now ask if the fact that Inter have got to the Champions League final "without even a single Italian on the pitch" (no Italian played at the Nou Camp on Wednesday night) is a success for Italian football? In truth, even if Marcello Lippi begs to differ, I would always argue that the reality is that if Inter win or Inter lose, this is a triumph or a disaster for Italian football.

Of course, Lippi has very obvious reasons to make his point.  Inter's success the other night does him no good.  He would dearly love to be able to call up Lucio, Maicon, Esteban Cambiasso, Wesley Sneijder and Diego Milito, to name but five, for the World Cup finals in South Africa but he cannot for the good reason that they are two Argentines, two Brazilians and one Dutchman.

Inter's success means little for national team

In reality, for all that Inter's triumph this week was the dramatic, thrilling stuff of sporting legend, Marcello Lippi will have learned much more about his South African plans from watching Inter beat Juventus 2-0 two weeks ago and from watching Roma losing 2-1 to Sampdoria last weekend.

Inter's 2-0 win over Juventus has to be put in the context of a match where Juve's Mali midfielder, Mohamed Sissoko was sent off in the 37th minute and where Inter only finally broke down a resolute Juventus side with a spectacular Maicon goal in the 75th minute, whilst their second goal from Samuel Eto'o came in injury time.

Even if Inter, with or without the sending off of Sissoko, were probably the better side, Marcello Lippi may well have taken some comfort from the performances of Juventus' Azzurri such as Fabio Cannavaro, Fabio Grosso and Vincenzo Iaquinta, all showing signs of finding their best form at exactly the right moment.

On that same note, Lippi may well have noticed another welcome return to form in last Sunday night's Roma vs. Sampdoria game. This was, of course, a bitter night for the Roma fans with the side from the Eternal City being knocked off the top of the table by a 2-1 loss which leaves them two points adrift of Inter, with three games to play.  

Yet, for 45 minutes, Roma played their best football of the season, much inspired by charismatic "old man" Francesco Totti, who also scored their first half goal. (Roma's obvious mistake was their failure to capitalize more fully on their first half dominance).

We have said before that we believe Marcello Lippi might yet spring a dramatic recall for talisman Totti. Both Lippi and Totti have always said that it will depend on the Roma man's fitness and form, come the month of May. Well, we are nearly there and the "old man" (he is 33) is looking good. That dramatic recall - Totti last played for Italy in the Berlin Final - cannot be excluded.

For all those reasons, you can see why, from Marcello Lippi's viewpoint, Inter's outstanding triumph this week is something of an irrelevancy, national morale boost notwithstanding.