How to understand soccer. Inter should not be a team that intimidated in this Champions League. Framed in the group with Bayern and Barcelona, nobody seemed to take notice of the Nerazzurri, with much more history to claim. But, after surviving that first trap and thanking some very desirable crosses (Porto, Benfica, and finally their city enemy, Milan), Inter, third in Serie A, 17 points behind champions Naples, has reached the European last step. And he will be able to recall the next June 10 final in Istanbul, against the winner of Manchester City-Real Madrid, that time when José Mourinho won the third and last European Cup for the club in 2010.
It does not seem easy to make comparisons with those interista squads that made history in European football. In 1964, Helenio Herrera on the bench and Sandro Mazzola and Luis Suárez on the pitch knocked down Real Madrid's Di Stéfano, Gento and Puskas in the final in Vienna. A year later, H.. H. got rid of another legendary team, Eusebio's Benfica, in a final played under the shelter of Giuseppe Meazza. While in 2010, when Inter reigned supreme in Europe for the last time after beating Van Gaal's Bayern at the Bernabéu, the stars could be listed: from the eternal captain Zanetti, to Samuel Eto'o who had just worked as a winger in the wall planted in the semifinals against Barça de Guardiola at the Camp Nou, a striker who had plenty of trade in the area (Diego Milito), but above all a coach, Mourinho, who turned each game into a mission only for believers. And that he acquired the category of messianic leader for the Inter fans.
The Inter of these times has little to do. Without the Moratti family in the box, governed by the heir to a Chinese holding company (Steven Zhang), and with the Argentine Lautaro Martínez as a great offensive reference and also captain, he also has in his coach, Simone Inzaghi, someone more than prepared to squeeze each of the episodes that determine football. He did it in the first leg of the Derby della Madonnina, when he played everything on the card with a captivating start to frustrate Milan with two goals in ten minutes at the San Siro. And he did it on his return, already as a local in the pagan temple of Lombardy, when he knew how to contain some rossoneri to whom it was of little use to recover Rafael Leao for the cause.
Brahim's chance
They say that Italian football is coming back. They have amassed teams in recent European rounds. But then one notices that the number ten of Milan, seven times European champion, is Brahim Díaz. A more than correct midfielder, without a doubt. But exempt from that aura that distinguishes earthly players from those who are not. Brahim, after ten minutes, found himself with the ball in front of him, a few inches beyond the penalty spot. And goalkeeper Onana, ready for a point-blank shot, had only to hold his position and wait for the ball to reach him.. Milan, perhaps at that moment, already understood that there would be no way to lift the tie. Even more so after seeing how Leao, the first time he intervened, turned around so slowly that time seemed to stop around him.
The Portuguese winger, undoubtedly the only footballer in Pioli's group with the ability to reconstruct scripts, tried once more. The referee did not see the ball hit his hand. little mattered. He left Dimarco behind with enormous ease and Acerbi on the ground with a cut made with child's scissors. He failed, however, at the culmination, with a shot that was too crossed.
Inter, who did not need to arrive in the vicinity of Maignan in too much danger, prepared to wait calmly. Barella did not have too many problems to eat the morale of Krunic and Tonali, responsible for a non-existent creativity in the absence of Bennacer due to injury. And the minutes could have been falling like paving stones waiting for a Milan revolution that never came.
Lautaro, invisible in the Argentine success in the World Cup in Qatar, but who found in that contradictory experience a good reason to believe in him again, climbed the fences of the Meazza. Then to an advertisement. And everything seemed little after coloring the previous confusion in the area between Gosens and Lukaku, recently entered the field, and nailing a left-footed shot into the net that Maignan did not even know how to foresee, beaten by the short stick.
Lautaro raised the fist of an Inter that, at this point, no one is afraid of.