Played for both: Inter and AC Milan
The 34 players in Goaler's data with league games for both Inter and AC Milan, from Giuseppe Meazza to Hakan Çalhanoğlu, and the decade when Inter's players kept crossing to Milan.
Thirty-four players in Goaler's football data have league games for both Inter and AC Milan. They run from Giuseppe Meazza, at Inter from 1927, to Francesco Acerbi, who crossed to Inter on loan in 2022. One senior appearance for each club is enough, loans included: the test a Tic-Tac-Toe answer has to pass. Years, league games and goals come from each player's English Wikipedia infobox.
Inter to Milan, mostly
Twenty-one of the 34 played for Inter first. The direct moves lean the same way: of the 20 crossings with no club in between, 15 went from Inter to Milan, four of them loans, and five from Milan to Inter. The 2000s were the busiest decade, with 14 of the 39 crossings in the data. Between 2000 and 2006, Taribo West, Andrea Pirlo, Cristian Brocchi, Dario Šimić, Clarence Seedorf, Christian Vieri and Giuseppe Favalli all went straight from Inter to Milan, while Francesco Coco and Thomas Helveg went the other way in our data. Andrés Guglielminpietro, who moved from Milan to Inter in 2001, is not in it.
The flow has turned since. After Leonardo Bonucci joined Milan from Juventus in 2017, the three crossings that followed all went to Inter: Matteo Darmian in 2020, Hakan Çalhanoğlu in 2021 and Acerbi in 2022. Çalhanoğlu is the only one of the 34 whose spell at either club is still open in his infobox; he played 135 league games for Milan and has 153 for Inter.
Meazza
Meazza's numbers stand apart. His infobox lists 348 league games and 240 goals for Inter between 1927 and 1940, followed by a direct move to Milan, where he scored nine in 37 games. After Juventus, Varese and Atalanta he came back to Inter for 1946–47 and two more goals. His 242 league goals for Inter are more than twice the next-best total on the list, Vieri's 103, and English Wikipedia's list of Serie A 100-goal scorers credits him with 216 in Serie A.
Two goalkeepers, one stop in Genoa
Lorenzo Buffon and Giorgio Ghezzi made the same trip in opposite directions, both through Genoa. Buffon kept goal in 277 league games for Milan from 1949 to 1959, moved to Genoa and played 79 games for Inter between 1960 and 1963. Ghezzi played 186 for Inter from 1951 to 1958, then Genoa, then 123 for Milan from 1959. Only Seedorf, with 300, and Pirlo, with 284, have more Milan league games on the list than Buffon.
Strikers and travellers
Zlatan Ibrahimović scored 57 league goals in 88 games for Inter between 2006 and 2009, went to Barcelona and was loaned to Milan in 2010 before signing for them. With a second spell from 2019 to 2023, he has 76 league goals for Milan in 125 games, and his 133 for the two clubs are second only to Meazza's 251. Ronaldo scored 49 in 68 games for Inter, then went via Real Madrid to Milan, where he scored nine in 20 games between January 2007 and 2008.
Aldo Serena crossed three times. An Inter player from 1978, he spent 1982–83 on loan at Milan and returned to Inter, came back again in 1987 after two seasons at Juventus, and finished at Milan from 1991 to 1993. Meazza, Nevio Scala and Hernán Crespo crossed twice each. Crespo made both of his moves as a Chelsea player, on loan to Milan in 2004–05 and to Inter from 2006.
| Player | Inter | AC Milan | First crossing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Giuseppe Meazza | 1927–1940, 1946–1947 (365) | 1940–1942 (37) | 1940, to Milan, direct |
| Lorenzo Buffon | 1960–1963 (79) | 1949–1959 (277) | 1960, to Inter, via Genoa |
| Giorgio Ghezzi | 1951–1958 (186) | 1959–1965 (123) | 1959, to Milan, via Genoa |
| Antonio Angelillo | 1957–1961 (113) | 1965–1966, 1967–1968 (14) | 1965, to Milan, via Roma |
| Nevio Scala | 1973–1975 (26) | 1965–1969, 1975–1976 (34) | 1973, to Inter, via Vicenza, Fiorentina |
| Fulvio Collovati | 1982–1986 (109) | 1976–1982 (158) | 1982, to Inter, direct |
| Aldo Serena | 1978–1985, 1987–1991 (165) | 1982–1983 loan, 1991–1993 (30) | 1982, to Milan on loan, direct |
| Christian Panucci | 1999–2001 (26) | 1993–1996 (89) | 1999, to Inter, via Real Madrid |
| Francesco Coco | 2002–2007 (26) | 1995–2002 (56) | 2002, to Inter, direct |
| Patrick Vieira | 2006–2010 (67) | 1995–1996 (2) | 2006, to Inter, via Arsenal, Juventus |
| Roberto Baggio | 1998–2000 (41) | 1995–1997 (51) | 1998, to Inter, via Bologna |
| Edgar Davids | 2004–2005 (14) | 1996–1997 (19) | 2004, to Inter, via Juventus |
| Ronaldo | 1997–2002 (68) | 2007–2008 (20) | 2007, to Milan, via Real Madrid |
| Taribo West | 1997–1999 (44) | 2000–2001 (4) | 2000, to Milan, direct |
| Andrea Pirlo | 1998–2001 (22) | 2001–2011 (284) | 2001, to Milan, direct |
| Thomas Helveg | 2003–2004 (23) | 1998–2003 (105) | 2003, to Inter, direct |
| Christian Vieri | 1999–2005 (143) | 2005–2006 (8) | 2005, to Milan, direct |
| Dario Šimić | 1999–2002 (66) | 2002–2008 (82) | 2002, to Milan, direct |
| Clarence Seedorf | 2000–2002 (64) | 2002–2012 (300) | 2002, to Milan, direct |
| Cristian Brocchi | 2000–2001 (15) | 2001–2008 (99) | 2001, to Milan, direct |
| Hernán Crespo | 2002–2003, 2006–2008 loan, 2008–2009 (81) | 2004–2005 loan (28) | 2004, to Milan on loan, via Chelsea |
| Giuseppe Favalli | 2004–2006 (49) | 2006–2010 (80) | 2006, to Milan, direct |
| Leonardo Bonucci | 2005–2006 loan (1) | 2017–2018 (35) | 2017, to Milan, via Bari, Juventus |
| Matteo Darmian | 2020–2021 loan, 2021–2026 (150) | 2006–2010 (4) | 2020, to Inter on loan, via Palermo, Torino, Manchester United, Parma |
| Zlatan Ibrahimović | 2006–2009 (88) | 2010–2011 loan, 2011–2012, 2019–2023 (125) | 2010, to Milan on loan, via Barcelona |
| Mario Balotelli | 2007–2010 (59) | 2013–2014, 2015–2016 loan (63) | 2013, to Milan, via Manchester City |
| Mancini | 2008–2011 (28) | 2010 loan (7) | 2010, to Milan on loan, direct |
| Sulley Muntari | 2008–2012 (66) | 2012 loan, 2012–2015 (70) | 2012, to Milan on loan, direct |
| Andrea Poli | 2011–2012 loan (18) | 2013–2017 (90) | 2013, to Milan, via Sampdoria |
| Antonio Cassano | 2012–2013 (28) | 2011–2012 (33) | 2012, to Inter, direct |
| Giampaolo Pazzini | 2011–2012 (50) | 2012–2015 (74) | 2012, to Milan, direct |
| Francesco Acerbi | 2022–2023 loan, 2023–2026 (101) | 2012–2013 (6) | 2022, to Inter on loan, via Sassuolo, Lazio |
| Matías Silvestre | 2012–2014 (9) | 2013–2014 loan (4) | 2013, to Milan on loan, direct |
| Hakan Çalhanoğlu | 2021– (153) | 2017–2021 (135) | 2021, to Inter, direct |
Who is not on the list
Ten more players have both clubs on their Wikidata record but do not count. Francesco Toldo, Cyril Domoraud and Francesco Moriero have no league game for Milan, and Diego Laxalt, Mattia Destro and Ümit Davala none for Inter, so none of them fits. For the other four, the link to one club rests on an undated Wikidata entry that the infobox does not list, and Goaler leaves it out (Milan's founder Herbert Kilpin, for one, never played for Inter).
The old end of the list may also be short. Players need articles on at least 20 language editions of Wikipedia to be in Goaler's data, and Ghezzi, with 21, only just makes it. Only four of the 34 began at either club before 1960, and anyone from those years with fewer pages would not show up here. The same count for Juventus and Inter finds 45 players.
Loans count on a board, too: Matías Silvestre's four league games on loan at Milan fit an Inter–Milan cell as well as Seedorf's 300.
Facts from Goaler's football data, built from English Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0) and Wikidata (CC0). Text written for Goaler.