MILAN (AP) \u2014 Inter Milan got its title defense off to a near-perfect start with a 4-1 win over newly-promoted Monza in Serie A on Saturday.<\/p>\n
In Spain later, Jos\u00e9 Mourinho was set to take charge of his first match back at Real Madrid \u2014 away at Espanyol.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere in Europe, Manchester United lost 2-0 at newly-promoted Hull in the Premier League, while in France, last season\u2019s runner-up Lens comfortably beat Auxerre 5-2.<\/p>\n
Inter forward Pio Esposito had a breakout season last campaign and the 21-year-old started right where he left off for the Nerazzurri.<\/p>\n
An impressive backheel flick from Esposito put Inter 3-1 up in early in the second half and Yann Bisseck added a fourth shortly afterwards.<\/p>\n
Inter got off to a great start when a fierce long-range shot from Hakan \u00c7alhano\u011flu gave it the lead in the sixth minute. But sloppy defending for Monza\u2019s equalizer showed just why Inter signed England defenders Djed Spence and John Stones in the offseason.<\/p>\n
Stones came on late on while Spence was in the stands along with England teammate Curtis Jones, who completed his move to Inter on Friday.<\/p>\n
Piotr Zieli\u0144ski and Yann Bisseck scored Inter\u2019s other goals. Inter dominated Italian soccer last season, winning both the league and the cup in Cristian Chivu\u2019s first year in charge.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere in Italy, Como \u2014 which surprised with a fourth-place finish last season \u2014 was held to a 1-1 draw at Udinese.<\/p>\n
Hull made a dream return to the Premier League after a nine-year absence, beating Manchester United 2-0 to puncture any preseason optimism surrounding the 20-time champions.<\/p>\n
First-half goals from Semi Ajayi and Nobel Mendy at set-pieces consigned United to a tepid loss away to a team that was promoted via the second-tier Championship playoffs at the end of last season and is widely expected to be among the relegation candidates.<\/p>\n
Tottenham, one of the biggest spenders in Europe this summer with $300 million \u2014 and counting \u2014 of new players in its squad, was overwhelmed in a 3-0 defeat at Brentford.<\/p>\n
Auxerre gave away two penalties and also played most of the match with 10 men after defender Christ Makosso was shown a straight red card for a foul on Abadallah Sima in the 35th minute.<\/p>\n
Florian Thauvin converted both penalties \u2013 the second one at the second time of asking after Auxerre goalkeeper Mamadou Diop saved the initial attempt but was off his line.<\/p>\n
All of Lens goals, apart from Thauvin\u2019s first 12th-minute penalty, came in the second half.<\/p>\n
See AP\u2019s full soccer coverage here<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MILAN (AP) \u2014 Inter Milan got its title defense off to a near-perfect start with a 4-1 win…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74308,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[28558,3202,24129,2383,28557,28561,21593,4297,82,1239,28555,1561,1562,28556,1558,1560,1559,28560,28559],"class_list":["post-74317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-madrid","tag-cristian-chivu","tag-curtis-jones","tag-djed-spence","tag-england","tag-florian-thauvin","tag-hakan-calhanoglu","tag-john-stones","tag-jose-mourinho","tag-madrid","tag-milan","tag-mourinho-madrid-inter-man-united-lens","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-pio-esposito","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-32554-ap-online-soccer-game-stories","tag-product-32562-ap-online-other-sports-news","tag-semi-ajayi","tag-yann-bisseck"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}