How Pirelli has affected the aesthetics of Inter

"We will no longer be the jersey sponsor but there will be a continuity of relationship, we will maintain the relationship".

With these words Marco Tronchetti Provera, CEO of Pirelli, officially confirmed the end of the link between the club and Inter. For the first time a person from the Pirelli shore spoke in these terms, marking the end of an era and a partnership that has continued uninterrupted since 1995. Over the past two years, the break between the club and the multinational for sure but never made official, almost as if the interested parties intended to have the fans absorb, with due notice, the disappearance of Pirelli from the Inter shirt.

Pirelli has entered the collective imagination of the fans, the same ones who in the last 26 years have always and only seen Pirelli (in various forms) on the Nerazzurri shirt. In only 4 cases the Pirelli logo was not represented in its classic form: in 2007-08 on the centenary jersey, in 2015-16 with the "Driver" variant, in the edition dedicated to Pirellifilm.com and the Chinese New Year in 2006.

But the aesthetics that the company represented by Tronchetti Provera has built over the last 26 years is of indisputable relevance in Inter culture. Pirelli has accompanied Inter in many successes, both nationally and internationally. In fact, since 1995 Inter have brought 1 Champions League, 1 UEFA Cup, 1 Club World Cup, 5 league titles, 4 Italian Cups and 4 Italian Super Cups to the showcase.

Inter are ready to close an era and looking to the future with the change of sponsor jersey and above all with the highly anticipated launch of the new logo. We asked Alberto Mariani, an expert graphic designer and Nerazzurri fan, how much Pirelli has affected the aesthetics of Inter and how to reverse a direction that has been going on for a quarter of a century:

"A team from Milan with a Milan brand that raises trophies, had its poetry from a symbolic as well as a commercial point of view. A sponsor like Pirelli is so deeply rooted in the visual level of the inter language that it has in fact become distinctive. The Pirelli logo is the first and obvious sign of recognition of an Inter shirt for the generation it has supported from 1995 onwards.

It is one of those cases in which the sponsor becomes part of the imagination, so much so that a Nerazzurri shirt without a crest, but with Pirelli on it, is an Inter shirt. Losing Pirelli in correspondence with the change of emblem will make the transition even more abrupt, an entire generation could find itself suddenly without identity references.

For many of us, seeing the Pirelli logo will still mean seeing something of the Inter world".

According to the calculations of the experts, in the last 25 years Pirelli has paid 234 million euros into the Nerazzurri's coffers, with an average of 9.37 million per season. There is talk of a negligible figure if we consider that Inter is currently looking for a sponsor who can provide financial aid of € 30-35 million, three times what Pirelli spends on average annually.