The Greatest Cup Tie of All Time
INTER MILAN vs BARCELONA had everything. It was a privilege to watch from my hotel room in Italy with a man screaming and stomping upstairs.
Mehdi Taremi won the ball just inside his own half and carried it down the sideline to burn off a few seconds of extra time, and the man upstairs went ballistic. He was banging walls, stomping his feet, shouting his approval over and over: “Dai! Dai! Dai!”
We were both watching Sky Sports Italia from a hotel in Bologna, about 140 miles from the San Siro in Milan, and he was making enough noise that it felt like we were sharing a room. To be fair, he was watching Inter and Barcelona fight out a punch-drunk, end-to-end, back-and-forth Champions League semifinal that might just go down as the greatest cup tie there ever was.
They came into this decisive second leg with three goals apiece, the product of a sensational opening round where Marcus Thuram started the scoring with an audacious backheel 30 seconds in. Denzel Dumfries made it 2-0 with a leaping scissor kick before Lamine Yamal went intergalactic to flip the match on its head. Still, Inter came again, then Barcelona matched them once more through an outrageous strike from Raphinha, and all that turned out to be a mere preview of coming attractions.
The anticipation for Tuesday’s Part Two was stratospheric. The myth-makers were sharpening their tools, preparing to carve this one into stone before it began. But when Inter went into halftime 2-0 up, you’d have been forgiven for thinking they were already on their way to the final. The Italian outfit were at home, in front of a raucous and gloriously partisan Nerazzuri crowd, and they’ve been a top team for three seasons now.
But you could tell it wasn’t over in the early minutes of the second half by the only slightly less partisan commentary on Sky Sports Italia. The play-by-play man was absolutely relentless — he scarcely took a breath even when the ball went out of bounds — but as Barcelona seized a grip on things, fear and trepidation began to creep into his voice.
When Lamine Yamal corralled the ball into his orbit to begin terrorizing the Inter backline, it was, “Sinistro! Sinistro!”
When Eric Garcia struck on 54 minutes to get Barcelona back into the game, it was, “Gol, Bar-che-llona.” Quiet, dejected, wholly concerned. You’d hardly have known that a centerback by trade had crept into the box and adjusted his body so cleverly to bonk a volley into the back of the net.
And then we were off. The shooting starlets from Catalunya took over the game in the second half, and their onslaught on the Inter goal was unrelenting. The hosts were struggling to get out and get up the field as Barça coach Hansi Flick’s halftime tweaks came good. Inter were on the rack, and Garcia nearly had another himself after a lightning counterattack from the visitors. It was a maze of passes forward, left, and right that twisted Inter inside-out, but the defender put his shot far too close to Yann Sommer, who still had to react with incredible speed to claw it away.
The Swiss goalkeeper could not keep the door padlocked for long, though, and soon Gerard Martín sent a swooping cross in from deep on the left for Dani Olmo to head home. For the second time in the same semifinal, Barça had come back from two goals behind, and they didn’t stop there.
They laid siege to their hosts’ 18-yard box, Yamal testing Sommer again on 76 minutes before Pedri set up the killer move. Inter, truly reeling now, turned it over far too close to their own goal with three minutes left in the 90. Raphinha stole in down the left, took on the pass, and struck once with his left — saved by Sommer. It came back to him, though, and there was no mistake about the Brazilian’s second effort. He buried it in the far bottom corner with his right foot for 3-2. From 2-0 down in enemy lands, Barcelona suddenly had one foot in the Champions League final.
To his credit, the man upstairs took all this in stride, perhaps the George Michael Bluth kind. Nary a hoot nor holler came down through the ceiling of the old Bolognese hotel. The minutes ticked on — 89, 90, 91 — and only an Inter player losing possession or putting one in the stands got a cry or crash from upstairs, as if only his team was playing and Barcelona were some kind of alien force over which he had no control, no grasp.
The lime green kits had flowed about the pitch in devastating fashion in that second period, an otherworldly invasion of pace and skill and timing and precision. Inter had just tried to survive, but now they were taking the initiative again in the final minutes as the trailing team always seems to do. They came pouring forward with all the same relentlessness Barcelona had when chasing the game, throwing everything at it. When half a chance for a handball popped up in extra time, Inter appealed to the referee desperately before their guests once again flowed forward the other way and Yamal smashed one at goal, rattling the post.
And then Dumfries got down the right, put in a low cross, and the big centerback, Francesco Acerbi, stole into the center-forward position and swept it high into the net. He ripped off his shirt and went steaming towards the corner as the San Siro roared its approval, an explosion in Milan and in Bologna, where the man upstairs was on another planet. “Dai! Dai! Dai! Dai! Dai! Dai! Dai! Dai! Dai!” There was banging, stomping, more voices now joining in. Inter had snatched the game back after it was snatched away from them. The Sky Italia feed panned to the fans, who stayed bouncing even once Barça kicked off to restart play.
There was even time for the neon-green extraterrestrials to threaten once more, when Yamal snuck through to force another save from Sommer on 95:43, but it felt like destiny now for this famous match: We were headed to extra time. The scoreboard read, “6-6.” On the whistle, Raphinha collapsed on the pitch.
We all know what happened from there, but don’t sleep on the fantastic work from Dumfries to wriggle free along the byline and find Taremi, who played his part as well to lay it off and set it all up for Davide Frattesi.
The 25-year-old midfielder has had his critics this season, including in recent weeks following that stinging defeat to Roma, but he delivered in legendary fashion here, pump-faking once to buy himself a moment, a window to strike. The roar upstairs was deafening, and soon enough the Interisti in Bologna were hooting and hollering in the courtyard outside the hotel.
As Frattesi ran away from the scene, the Italian threw off his congratulatory teammates time and again and careened towards the corner to leap up a metal gate and be with the fans, genuinely screaming in his fervor, as if to expel all the pressure and the noise and announce he’d come good when it mattered.
It was one of so many storylines lurking behind a cup tie that, if only for the sheer number of lead changes, would already be written into legend.
There was Taremi and his telling contributions after a disastrous season where he’s faced far worse criticism than the man he set up for the winner. There was the return of Lautaro Martínez from what looked like an injury that could keep him out of this massive match, for a club he forms the heart of as captain and talisman. Pedri ran the game in midfield at 22 years old, beguiling his experienced adversaries and lacing together so many of those devastatingly fluid Barcelona attacks. There was another chapter in Raphinha’s story of redemption, as he’s risen to become one of the world’s great players after a tricky start in Catalunya.
And there was Lamine Yamal making the case across these two legs that he is already the world’s greatest player at 17 years old. He nearly dragged Barcelona back level in the tie yet again on 114 minutes. Barcelona went streaming forward and a beautifully weighted through ball from Raphinha sent him barreling at the Inter defense, but his curled effort towards the far post was clawed away spectacularly by Sommer again. In my hotel, the man upstairs reserved some of his most vociferous Dais for that one, and the 36-year-old Swiss earned his own storyline as a goalkeeper who won man of the match in a game that ended 4-3.
Of course, there was Acerbi, too, spectacularly recovered from his struggles with depression and addiction to rescue one of the world’s great clubs from the brink of a trophyless season after all those months where they loudly declared they were hunting a treble.
And there was Simone Inzaghi, the man questioned for his tactics and his substitutions in recent weeks as Inter crashed out of the Coppa Italia to enemies A.C. Milan and gravely imperiled their push for the Scudetto with that loss to Roma. The coach was dressed impeccably in a jet-black Milanese suit that by the end was soaked through with the rain that fell in torrents on this mythical night. If Inter go on to win this competition, they’ll put those threads in a museum.
I’ve been watching football at the top level for two decades, and in that time, I can think of two cup ties that rivaled this one: that Tottenham-Ajax semifinal, and the Guardiola-Mourinho war that these same two teams fought back in 2010. In fact, I really think this one has no rival. Inter led four different times in this semifinal, and only the last one stuck.⚽︎