Mehdi Taremi still waiting to make his mark at Inter Milan ahead of Italian Supercoppa in Riyadh

Striker will be hoping to one day match hero status of Algeria's Ismael Bennacer at city rivals, and potential final opponents in Saudi Arabia, AC Milan

Iranian striker Mehdi Taremi has scored just once in 17 appearances since moving to Inter Milan from Porto. Getty Images

As he set off for Riyadh last night, chasing a first trophy of his spell with Italian champions Inter Milan, Mehdi Taremi could have been excused a smile about what is unfolding on the other side of Milan, the city he has, since July, called home.

AC Milan, Inter’s great rivals, are in a state of chaos, their manager sacked at the weekend, a new one set to make his touchline debut for them in the Italian Supercoppa, the tournament being staged in Saudi Arabia’s capital over the next six days.

Taremi, the captain of Iran, will sympathise a little, too. He knows Milan’s new coach, Sergio Conceicao, as well as he knows any manager; and Conceicao would acknowledge that, over 13 years as a head coach, he has never known a more reliable match-winner than Taremi.

Over four years at Porto, they were fabulous allies as manager and centre-forward, winning seven Portuguese domestic prizes, including a Primeira Liga title, together.

In Conceicao’s aggressive, feisty Porto sides, Taremi scored 88 goals in 171 matches, and directly assisted another 56. Inter were thrilled to add his sure finishing, his hard work, his ability with his back to goal and at running the channels, to their roster in the summer.

Yet Taremi’s first six months in Italy have been puzzlingly barren. His 19 appearances for Inter – admittedly a majority coming off the substitute’s bench – have yielded a single goal so far. There’s impatience among fans.

As Inter manager Simone Inzaghi put it before setting off for the Saudi capital: “It’s important for Taremi to ‘unblock’. I look at his performance and it’s all there, but I know how much goals count for a striker.”

Inzaghi used to be one, and indeed, spent two seasons of his playing career gratefully being served by crosses from a Lazio winger who also went into elite coaching – Sergio Conceicao.

The old friends becoming managerial adversaries is one of many layers of intrigue around this Supercoppa, where a Milan derby is a plausible final. The opening semi-final pits Inter against Serie A leaders Atalanta at Al Awwal Park on Thursday, followed by Conceicao’s in-at-the-deep-end bow for Milan against Juventus 24 hours later.

There’s another piquant reunion guaranteed in that collision. The new Milan manager, appointed very shortly after Paulo Fonseca’s sacking at the weekend, is the father of Juventus winger Francisco Conceicao, who played alongside Taremi under his dad for two seasons at Porto.

The younger Conceicao has made a good impression at Juventus, with eight goal-involvements in his 19 matches since joining at the same time as Taremi signed for Inter.

So the well-rehearsed argument that moving from Portugal’s top tier to Italy’s top division is a daunting leap of standards hardly applies to Conceicao junior. But it’s a theme Taremi, who has been studiously learning Italian with a private tutor, hears more and more often as his lean spell in front of goal – he scored his sole Inter goal back on October 1 – extends.

He looks “as if he landed in Milan from another football“, opined the Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport. “Without disrespecting the Portuguese league, Portugal is Portugal,” said the World Cup-winning former Inter striker Alessandro Altobelli of Taremi’s slow start.

Inzaghi is still backing the 32-year-old to be his old self, to come into form. He has picked Taremi in his starting XI for all six of Inter’s Champions League matches so far this season.

While he may embark on the Supercoppa bid with captain Lautaro Martinez and the season’s leading scorer Marcus Thuram preferred up front, he anticipates a key role for Taremi in Saudi Arabia.

“As far as I’m concerned, I have 25 players who are starters. I have no doubts about any of them,” said the Inter coach.

Conceicao could scarcely say the same about his new employer, a Milan who sit eight places and 13 points behind third-placed Inter in Serie A and who ruthlessly made Sunday’s 1-1 draw with Roma the last of Fonseca’s mere 24 matches in charge. It is no secret that his successor, who had left Porto in the summer, had been lined up beforehand.

If Conceicao would have favoured a less taxing opening night than a meeting with Juventus, he does inherit one significant piece of good news: the return to fitness of Algerian Ismael Bennacer.

If 32-year-old Taremi has Inter supporters concerned by his absent goals, Bennacer is the footballer whose recent, long absence from competition has made Milanisti pine.

The midfielder, the motor of the Milan who won Serie A in 2021/22 and the Player of the Tournament when Algeria claimed the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations, underwent surgery on a calf muscle tear in September.

The extent to which he has been missed was audible around San Siro on Sunday evening. He had been deemed recovered enough for Fonseca to name him on the bench.

When he warmed up, home fans cheered him. When he came on at half-time to take up his anchoring position, there was more warm applause.

When, joining the attack, he nimbly jinked past Paulo Dybala to arrow a low shot – pushed past the Roma post, in extremis, by goalkeeper Mile Svilar – it was taken as confirmation that Bennacer, 27, is back and ready to galvanise a troubled winter.

He left the field to be briskly informed that Fonseca had been sacked, yet determined to stay on track with his comeback.

“I’ll show what I can do, as always,” said Bennacer, “and with my experience I’m eager to help the team as much as I can.”

The Supercoppa represented a stimulus for relaunch, he added. “I’ve worked really hard over the last few months and it would be a boost to start the new year well. We’re focused. It’s a trophy we haven’t won for a while.”

The eventful night against Roma had been Bennacer’s first Milan outing for 134 days, the second long layoff he has endured in his six years at the club.

That’s plenty of time for supporters, and indeed a trio of coaches in his time there, to have learnt that the rossoneri machine functions far better with Bennacer driving it than a Milan where he is sidelined. Inter’s Taremi longs for that sort of status in the blue half of their city.