{"id":74320,"date":"2026-08-22T20:16:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T20:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/74320\/"},"modified":"2026-08-22T20:16:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T20:16:18","slug":"mourinho-gets-going-at-madrid-inter-starts-with-a-win-and-man-united-loses-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/74320\/","title":{"rendered":"Mourinho gets going at Madrid, Inter starts with a win and Man United loses"},"content":{"rendered":"

MILAN (AP) \u2014 Inter Milan<\/a> got its title defense off to a near-perfect start with a 4-1 win over newly-promoted Monza in Serie A<\/a> on Saturday.<\/p>\n

In Spain<\/a> later, Jos\u00e9 Mourinho was set to take charge of his first match back at Real Madrid<\/a> \u2014 away at Espanyol.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in Europe, Manchester United<\/a> lost 2-0 at newly-promoted Hull in the Premier League<\/a>, while in France<\/a>, last season\u2019s runner-up Lens comfortably beat Auxerre 5-2.<\/p>\n

Esposito shines from the start<\/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<\/a> added a fourth shortly afterwards.<\/p>\n

Inter got off to a great start when a fierce long-range shot from Hakan Calhanoglu<\/a> gave it the lead in the sixth minute. But sloppy defending for Monza\u2019s equalizer showed just why Inter signed England<\/a> defenders Djed Spence<\/a> and John Stones<\/a> in the offseason.<\/p>\n

Stones came on late on while Spence was in the stands along with England<\/a> teammate Curtis Jones, who completed his move to Inter on Friday.<\/p>\n

Piotr Zielinski<\/a> 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<\/a>, Como \u2014 which surprised with a fourth-place finish last season \u2014 was held to a 1-1 draw at Udinese.<\/p>\n

Hull stuns Man United<\/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<\/a>, 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Auxerre self destructs<\/p>\n

Auxerre gave away two penalties and also played most of the match with 10 men after defender Christ Makosso<\/a> was shown a straight red card for a foul on Abadallah Sima in the 35th minute.<\/p>\n

Florian Thauvin<\/a> 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

___<\/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":71027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2383,643,556,28561,1807,2937,866,82,28563,1644,17,28559],"class_list":["post-74320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-madrid","tag-england","tag-event_recap","tag-france","tag-hakan-calhanoglu","tag-inter-milan","tag-international-friendlies","tag-italy","tag-madrid","tag-piotr-zielinski","tag-serie-a","tag-spain","tag-yann-bisseck"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74320","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=74320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}