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 Martínez and Hakan Calhanoglu, after Barcelona stunningly 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. Injured at the weekend, in a game he had no right to play, Frattesi took time he had no right to take, showed composure he had no right to possess.
There were tears at the end, and not just on the Barcelona side either. For Simone Inzaghi’s team, beaten finalists in Istanbul two years ago, this has been a stirring journey of resolve and belief, of fortifying themselves with every setback.
A defence that had let in just five goals all competition conceded six in two games, and yet with the abyss beckoning they summoned their nerve, withstood the waves of terrifying Barcelona pressure, stood in the path of the great Lamine Yamal and survived to tell the tale. For Barcelona’s beautiful doomed experiment, a lesson that living without compromises is not the same as living without consequences. And yet it feels harsh to chastise them too strongly here: they led this semi-final for just five minutes out of 210 and yet not until the last kick was it truly possible to believe they were done. Hansi Flick’s side will surely return, a little bolder and a little wiser, and in the meantime there is a clásico to be won and a league title to be secured.
What Barcelona will need to fix, above all, is the sense of boundless hope they manage to engender in their opponents, the suspicion that what is done by their forwards can always be undone at the back. Time and again Inter pushed at the door to find it open. The wing-backs Denzel Dumfries and Federico Dimarco were rampant, the press was ravenous and while Gerard Martín and García offered a sublime attacking threat in the second half, too often they were left exposed.
It was Olmo who got into trouble for Inter’s first goal, Dimarco’s crunching tackle and instant through ball putting Dumfries clean through. The finish for Martínez was elementary, and yet it felt like a cathartic goal for the Argentinian: a striker who for all his murderously high work rate is now also learning to deliver on the biggest stages.
Barcelona had a little flurry of chances around the half-hour mark, but Inter were beginning to reassert themselves long before Calhanoglu’s penalty on the stroke of half-time, a marginal VAR decision against Pau Cubarsí as he slid in on Martínez. Two-nil, and yet amid Inter’s ecstasy the only thing they knew for sure was that their suffering was not done.
Because if we know anything about this Barcelona, they only ever have one answer to adversity: to go harder and higher, more naivety, more fearlessness. The result, for Inter, was a taste of their own medicine: showers of sweeping attack from the flanks, capped by Martín’s cross and García’s crushing volley, full-back to full-back. Six minutes later, it was Martín again, crossing from the left again, panic in the Inter area again, and this time Olmo with the header.
With a thrumming inevitability, Raphinha claimed the lead, a wild lash at the back post after his initial shot was blocked. But with time running out, the inexhaustible Dumfries found enough strength to hold off Cubarsí, to square for Acerbi. 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: football played on the very edge of everything. Lamine Yamal probed and prowled; the momentum swung with a capricious violence, and in the end Frattesi found himself with the ball 12 yards out. Frattesi finished; the San Siro erupted.
Even now there was still time for Barça, still a chance. But there were to be no more miracles. The miracle, it turned out, had been the semi-final itself; a match that seemed to defy time had finally run out of it.
