A couple of weeks before his 30th birthday, Edin Dzeko scored what turned out to be the last of his 72 goals for Manchester City. It was against Liverpool, a typical Dezko strike in many ways — drifting between his markers, a half-turn and a powerful right-footed finish.
He had been under some pressure in the weeks before, for a lengthy barren spell in front of goal. By then, March 2015, he sensed his long, epoch-making time at the club was drawing to a close and that summer, City, assessing his age and thanking him for his key role in making them champions of England — twice in Dzeko’s time there — loaned him out to Roma.
So began the first renaissance of one of the most enduringly effective centre-forwards of his generation. He’s been a league champion in Germany and England with Wolfsburg and City, who were not used to finishing top of those leagues. He’s been a target man through an era when that type of striker has faded from fashion, but a target man who has always had extra range to his game.
Roma saw that quickly, and made Dzeko a permanent member of their staff when his loan from City ended. The following season, 2016/17, he was Serie A’s leading scorer.
Dzeko will turn 36 next month, and it could be said he is now enjoying his second renaissance. Last summer, he joined Inter Milan — who host Liverpool in the last-16 of the Champions League on Wednesday — given the burdensome responsibility of replacing the sold Romelu Lukaku as principal striker.
He was a cut-price replacement, hired by a club who had followed up winning the Italian title with a sudden, brutal sale of assets to service debts. Lukaku was joined at the exit by Achraf Hakimi, an excellent supplier of crosses to any target man. Antonio Conte, the manager, also left.
Yet an apparently weakened Inter have kept pace with the standards set by Conte’s champions. In Europe, they have exceeded those standards.
On Wednesday, the club take part in a knockout tie in Europe’s leading club competition for the first time in a decade. Dzeko’s goals got them out of the group stage — they finished bottom of their group under Conte last season — with a match to spare.
At the weekend, his 10th goal of the league campaign, a second-half equaliser at Napoli, kept Inter well in the hunt to retain the title. They trail leaders AC Milan by a single point with a game in hand. Four days before holding Napoli, who are third in the table, Dzeko’s second-minute strike against his old club Roma had guided Inter towards the semi-final of the Coppa Italia.
Nobody at Inter is actively nurturing dreams of a Treble, something the club achieved with their last Champions League triumph in 2010, but a domestic prize is there to be claimed. As for Europe, manager Simone Inzaghi is quite clear who the favourites are this evening.
“We are up against one of the strongest teams in the world,” said Inzaghi, “and the strength stems from the front of the team and the movement there.” Or, as Jurgen Klopp, Liverpool’s manager, described it, a twin “force of nature”, Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane.
Klopp was remarking on the swift recovery, and apparent freshness of the Egyptian and the Senegalese, both of them involved in a marathon Africa Cup of Nations final that went to penalties, Mane converting the decider, only 10 days ago.
Dzeko needs little reminding of the impact of Mane and Salah. Salah was for two seasons a teammate at Roma; united with Mane at Liverpool, he was at the sharp point of an extraordinary Champions League semi-final against Roma in 2018. It finished, over two legs, Liverpool 7, Roma 6. Mane scored in both legs, Salah a brace in the Anfield game.
Dzeko, for his part, kept Roma alive in the tie twice, with a goal in each of the games, the first a classic — chesting down a lofted ball, and turning away from his marker to rifle home when Roma were trailing 5-0 in the first leg. When Dezko made the overall score 7-4 in Rome, an astonishing comeback bid gained real momentum, his team only a goal shy of taking the contest to extra-time by the final whistle.
That goal, incidentally, made it three successive games against Liverpool in which Dzeko has featured on the scoresheet. His latest duel with Virgil van Dijk should be one to savour.
