Serie A still risks losing its fourth Champions League qualifying place to Germany from 2011 depending on results in the rest of the season but some of the gloom which descended has quickly been lifted by the success of Jose Mourinho's team.
The Italian champions and league leaders, who held a 2-1 first leg advantage, battled bravely to win 1-0 at Mourinho's former club on Tuesday and seal a famous 3-1 aggregate victory.
"It's a great moment for the team, a great moment for Inter, for all the players who year after year had problems overcoming this barrier of the last 16, and now they have done it," Mourinho, the jewel in Serie A's crown, told reporters.
"This qualification for the quarter-finals was earned not with luck, but with merit, thanks to a team which was perfect."
Fiorentina's unlucky last-16 exit at the hands of Bayern Munich and twice champions Juventus being dumped out in the group stage had raised the prospect of no Italian team reaching the quarter-finals for the second straight year.
"Serie A is not the most beautiful league but there are more pressures than in other championships. The coaches are very good and you can lose against the bottom team," he told reporters.
Samuel Eto'o's 78th-minute winner will have shocked English fans who now find only two Premier League teams in the last eight rather than the customary four.
But one good result cannot hide Serie A's deficiencies.
Milan's top player Kaka left for Real before the start of the season and I
