Inter de Champions: chronicle, result and goals

Beyond the tactics, databases and arrows to explain the game, football continues to be played with the heart. People play it. On big nights, the stadium transforms into a living being, beating, enjoying and suffering. And on the pitch, the footballers face their ghosts. It’s hard not to get nervous on days like these, but you have to. Inter, in fact, did not. He received a goal, a hard, dry blow to his stomach. But he got up, he knew how to suffer and in 15 tragic minutes after the break he sent a Barça that still has a lot to learn into the corner. Aware that it was one of those days in which failure was forbidden, Barça played with heart, but made many mistakes. He was unable to transform a well-crafted plan into action. Xavi, in fact, had shown himself to be a diligent student. He learned from the mistakes of the Milan match, making decisions that helped his men in the first half. Raphinha inherited the right wing, connecting with a reborn Sergi Roberto. The case of Reusenc is particularly beautiful. Not so long ago he seemed doomed to pack his bags to move away and suddenly found himself playing a top-flight European duel again. In addition, Xavi knew how to enhance his virtues. Sergi Roberto had always been a midfield player, until he ended up as a winger. The coach from Valais, however, gave him the interior corridors that Raphinha generated. And so came the goal that seemed to turn the stadium into a party.

Sergi Roberto and Raphinha scored the goal, but Dembélé did it, crossing the entire area. Hidden on the left, the Frenchman is a man of extremes. In Milan he touched more than 100 balls and failed to do anything. At the Camp Nou, he hardly touched the ball, but one of the few that he had ended up in the back of the goal of an Onana who was sick of wasting time, whenever he could. Inter is not pleasant to watch, but honestly it is. He came to defend himself and hurt the counter. And they brought enough danger, with their attacks, especially with a header from Dzeko that by a few centimeters did not leave the Camp Nou speechless. The Bosnian striker, however, saw them with an Eric Garcia who knew how to put his body to stand up to him. But for Martorell’s centre-back, like all of Barça, fate had a bad joke in store for him, when he couldn’t stop Lautaro in the second Italian goal.

Barça was a tightrope walker forced to do somersaults, without a safety net. In the box office, the management didn’t even want to think about what would happen if they lost. Pay bills and receipts without having that much income. The spell created by lever strokes would have faded. Barça fall into a harsh reality where, rightly, they can complain about that cursed suspension of selections in which everything started to change. Before, Xavi’s team was beautiful, goal-scoring, ambitious. But within a week he lost a bunch of starting defensemen and became a cricket pot. In fact, the one who suffered the most was a Pique who discovered himself slow, lost, insecure. On the play for the Italian equaliser, he let the ball pass thinking there was no one behind him. But the tiny Nicolò Barella, who had the whole game with Gavi in ​​a duel between players with the face of a naughty boy, slipped inside the area to beat Ter Stegen. Five minutes later it was Lautaro who turned Eric into a statue of salt, to score the second goal in a move where Busquets, beaten, had lost the ball again.

I sort of Lewandowski

Xavi called on Ansu and De Jong to try to regain the initiative. With so many casualties and with the burden of the defeat in Milan hurting, the team fell into despair, encountering time and time again the defense of an Inter programmed to play like this. The Italian team is a stone in the shoe, a tie knot that tightens too much. It’s undermining your morale, it’s hurting you, it’s taking your toll. The minutes were passing and the demons were gnawing at the morale of a team that in this short European trip has encountered a bad draw, with VAR decisions that are difficult to understand and with a lot of injuries that have turned the defense into the Achilles’ heel of a team that was lucky enough to play with Lewandowski, chased by a Skriniar who softened him bravely. First, he luckily scored to make it 2-2 with a shot deflected by a centre-back, but Inter struck again with a goal from Gosens on the counter that looked final in the 86th minute. Not for Lewandowski, who he avoided the funeral with a goal in the last minutes that left the future of a team that is still alive, but very touched. Europe continues to torture Barça. Both in the offices and on the lawn.