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7 hours ago
5
Fittingly, after three-and-a-half hours, the 13 goals and the three invasions from the substitutes’ bench, the heavens opened: a downpour that also felt like a kind of baptism. Inter and Barcelona had drained themselves many times over, and discovered every time that they still had more to give. We were in a place beyond plans and maps, beyond shapes and tactics, beyond sanity.
And so ended what turned out to be less a Champions League semi-final and more of an elongated scream, the sort of game that emerges when both sides give up on perfection and in so doing somehow manage to produce it. Perfect theatre, perfect tension, perfect imperfection, a perfect clash of styles and a perfect balance: between flamboyant, fearless youth and grizzled, grimacing experience.
Still it had to be settled, and so after Inter went two up through Lautaro Martinez and Hakan Calhanoglu, after Barcelona drew themselves level through Eric García and Dani Olmo, after the sprawling saves from Yann Sommer, after Raphinha in the 87th minute and Francesco Acerbi in the 93rd, came Davide Frattesi in the 99th, taking time he had no right to take, showing composure he had no right to have.
For Barcelona, hazed but heroic in their own way, a lesson that living without compromises is not the same as living without consequences. Hansi Flick’s side will surely rise again, bolder and wiser, and it was to Inter’s credit, with the abyss beckoning, that they summoned their nerve, finished what they started, and reminded themselves that against Barcelona there is always, always another chance.
And if Barcelona at their best feel like a beautiful experiment, Barcelona at their worst can feel a little like pushing at an open door.
Simone Inzaghi’s tactics were courageously bold, the defensive line stationed high, the press ruthless and hungry, Acerbi stepping out of defence to plug the gaps in midfield and the wing-backs Denzel Dumfries and Federico Dimarco always primed, a double threat to which Barcelona had precious few answers.
None of Barcelona’s front four were really getting into the game. Instead it was the backline being squeezed, and when Olmo tried to finesse himself out of trouble in his own half, Dimarco’s crunching tackle and instant through ball put Dumfries clean through on goal. Dumfries unselfishly squared the ball, and the finish for Martínez was firmly at the easier end of the scale. It was his fourth touch of the game.
And though Barcelona had a little flurry of chances around the half-hour mark, Inter were beginning to reassert themselves long before Calhanoglu’s penalty on the stroke of half-time.
A pass from Mkhitaryan put Martínez away again, forcing Pau Cubarsí to slide in. Original decision: no penalty. VAR check: penalty. For Inter an unimaginable cushion, albeit one that felt just a little too easy, just a little too frictionless, a little too free of suffering.
Call it naivety. Call it inexperience. But we knew all this about Barcelona already, they know it about themselves, and they only ever have one answer: to go harder and higher, more naivety, more fearlessness.
The result, for Inter, was a taste of their own medicine: waves of sweeping attack from the flanks, capped by Gerard Martin’s cross and Eric Garcia’s crushing volley, full-back to full-back.
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Somehow it felt as if a third leg had begun. Six minutes later, it was Martin again, crossing from the left again, a fleeting panic in the Inter area again, and this time Olmo with the header. No time for Inter to curse their luck: Sommer pulled out a miraculous save to deny García again, while a penalty for a foul on Lamine Yamal, frustrated but irrepressible, was adjudged to be just outside the box by the VAR after the referee had blown for a penalty. For the first time, it was the travelling fans in the nosebleed seats making all the noise.
They rose again to affirm Raphinha’s winning goal that wasn’t a winning goal, a wild lash at the back post after his first shot was blocked. But with time running out, the inexhaustible Dumfries found enough strength to hold off Cubarsí, to square for Acerbi, and the veteran defender smashed the ball into the top corner to take this unbelievable semi-final into its epilogue.
Everyone was dying, and yet somehow everyone had scarcely felt more alive. This was football played on the edge of everything, football that meant everything. Lamine Yamal probed and prowled; the momentum swung with a wild violence, and in the end Frattesi found himself with the ball 12 yards out.
Frattesi finished; the San Siro erupted, and yet even now there was still time for Barcelona, still chances to survive. But there were to be no more miracles. A game that seemed to defy time had finally run out of it.
