Inter midfielder Federico Dimarco scored in the pre-season derby against AC Milan in Perth, Australia, giving the Nerazzurri an early lead before Christopher Nkunku equalised to end the match 1-1. The result, played thousands of kilometres from Milan, offered Inter coach Cristian Chivu a first competitive look at his squad's shape ahead of the 2025-26 Serie A defence.
The scoreline matters less than what it confirms about Dimarco's standing within this Inter side. A player who finished the title-winning campaign with six goals and 16 assists across 34 Serie A appearances — carrying an average rating of 7.40 — does not need a pre-season friendly to establish his credentials. What the Perth goal does suggest is that the 28-year-old arrived in Australia in working condition, not merely going through the motions of a summer tour.
Chivu's public framing of the pre-season was deliberate. The Inter coach stated that the work being done is more important than results at this stage, a position that aligns with how a defending champion ought to approach August. For Dimarco, that framing creates space: the pressure of a title race is weeks away, and the priority is rhythm, fitness, and the kind of positional repetition that turns a good season into a consistent one.
The underlying profile supports optimism. An AI overall rating of 76 out of 100, with a ceiling assessed at 78, places Dimarco in a narrow band of players who have largely fulfilled their potential without yet reaching it — a distinction that matters when projecting whether last season's output was a peak or a baseline. Sixteen assists in a single Serie A campaign is not a number that sustains itself without genuine quality in both decision-making and execution; the question for 2025-26 is whether the system around him remains stable enough to replicate the conditions that produced it.
Inter finished the previous season top of Serie A with 86 points from 37 matches, conceding only 32 goals — a defensive solidity that gave Dimarco the freedom to operate high and wide without constant recovery duties. Chivu's squad retains that structural identity, and a pre-season goal in a derby, however low the stakes, is a reasonable indicator that Dimarco intends to carry his momentum forward rather than rebuild it from scratch.