The Inzaghi brothers, Filippo and Simone, are used to sibling rivalry.
Their careers as strikers coincided in Serie A for more than a decade, though not as teammates.
Between them they won 60 caps for Italy and Filippo, three years older, had 57 of those.
He also had the more glamorous career, leading the line with Juventus and AC Milan, while Simone, a long-term loyalist to Lazio, hit his peak with a league title in 2000.
The brothers spent the latest festive season together in their hometown of Piacenza and reflected on the new directions they had taken in 2014.
It was the year Filippo, 41, made enough of a name for himself coaching in the youth system at AC Milan to be elevated to the top job as head coach of Italy’s most internationally prestigious club.
Simone, 38, enjoyed success looking after Lazio’s age-group teams, guiding them to a junior Coppa Italia triumph, and remains in charge of Lazio’s Under-20 team.
These are evidently siblings with parallel managerial gifts.
The older Inzaghi takes Milan to Lazio’s Stadio Olimpico today with all the noise and fury of a crisis enveloping him and his club.
If the visit of the Italian top flight’s 10th-placed team to a Lazio sitting fifth does not give Filippo any respite, he faces the same again four days later, when Milan host Lazio in the Coppa Italia.
The two matches against Lazio look like a watershed, a survive-or-perish situation in which Inzaghi’s future in a job that has changed hands four times in the past 12 months will be decided.
Last January, Massimiliano Allegri was judged and sacked by Milan and is now at league leaders Juventus.
He was replaced for a game by his deputy Mauro Tassotti, then Clarence Seedorf, who, like Inzaghi, had no previous experience as a senior coach, took over.
Seedorf was no longer required at the end of a season in which Milan finished outside the European places.
Ominously for Inzaghi, Seedorf’s 19 Serie A games yielded 35 points, while “Superpippo’s” half a season has brought in 26.
He is frequently reminded that there is a bottom line and he is not meeting it.
Club president Silvio Berlusconi, who denied on Thursday the latest rumours he is seeking a buyer for the club, was reported to have fumed to the Italian press agency, ANSA: “It is not acceptable to lose to teams where the players are paid five times less than ours.”
This month, Milan have lost at home to Sassuolo and Atalanta, and at Torino.
A second successive season without Uefa Champions League income, which will be Milan’s fate if they do not climb seven places in the table by the end of May, is a painful prospect.
Milan’s limited recruitment budget already means a squad heavy with loanees and veterans.
Although Inzaghi has coaxed high-class performances from the likes of Jeremy Menez, discarded by Paris Saint-Germain, he was unable to rejuvenate Fernando Torres, who scored just one goal in his six months as Milan’s centre-forward and has departed.
Milan head to the Italian capital without injured midfielder Nigel De Jong, suspended defender Adil Rami and with Menez in a form slump.
Inzaghi knows he will be bearing the scrutiny of his employers, and, somewhere nearby, the limited sympathy of his younger brother.
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