Inter’s winter signings Xherdan Shaqiri and Lukas Podolski combined to help fire the Nerazzurri into the quarter-finals of the Coppa Italia at the expense of nine-man Sampdoria, last night.

The Swiss midfielder, making his first start since leaving Bayern Munich earlier this month, swept up Arsenal loanee Podolski’s pass to open the scoring in the 71st minute of play at San Siro.

Mauro Icardi had earlier seen his penalty saved by keeper Sergio Romero but beat him in the 87th minute to confirm Inter’s progress towards a meeting with either Napoli or Udinese.

Samp played most of the game without Nenad Krsticic after the Serbian was dismissed for fouling Icardi in the 12th minute and Pawel Wszolek followed his team-mate down the tunnel on 77 minutes.

Earlier in the evening, Mario Gomez rediscovered his killer touch by scoring twice to boost Fiorentina into the last eight after they beat Atalanta 3-1.

The former Bayern Munich striker has notched only one league goal this season – and only five in his whole Fiorentina career before yesterday – but bagged two more either side of Juan Cuadrado’s penalty to put the Tuscans firmly in control before Rolando Bianchi hit back in the 41st minute.

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