Six sensational goals, a teenage wizard, and all the drama as Barcelona come back from behind twice
At first glance, a Champions League semi-final tie between Barcelona and Inter doesn’t particularly scream goal fest. It wasn’t promised, but it was delivered anyway. For the neutral, the sad thing about the game was that it ended.
Inter were boosted by the return from injury of Marcus Thuram, and talk about how much they had missed him was clearly true because he scored in the very first minute to set the tone for the rest of the match. Denzel Dumfries bolted down the right, a man on a mission, and crossed into the Barcelona box. A half-clearance invited more pressure and Thuram deflated the atmosphere at the Estadi Olimpico with a cheeky backheel finish.
Barcelona showed ambition but 20 minutes later Inter had scored again, this time with a lovely bicycle kick from Dumfries. Pedri had panicked and withdrawn his head, else the midfielder might have been awarded a freekick.
Trailing 2-0 at home against an Italian side with the meanest defence in Europe this season, Barcelona were always going to need some kind of supernatural inspiration to come back into the tie. And the Catalans got it. Teenage sensation Lamine Yamal, putting additional credibility on the Lionel Messi comparisons, picked the ball up, left some of the most disciplined defenders in Europe statuesque, and then curled an absolute beauty in off the post.
Minutes rolled by as Yamal and Barcelona terrorised the Inter defence, and near the end of the half the home side got their equaliser. Beautiful passing and movement saw Raphinha through on goal, and the winger expertly nodded the ball across the six-yard box, where it rendezvoused with Ferran Torres.
This was peak football. The second half offered even more entertainment. Barca probing again and again, Yamal torturing Inter from the right. But the Catalans were too open in defence and all their excellent work in attack nearly came undone. That man Dumfries again rose taller than everyone else and headed in a corner, but the home side soon levelled again, albeit somewhat fortuitously, as Raphinha belted a long-range shot and it ricocheted off the cross bar but then went in off the goalkeeper’s back. Only a minute and 53 seconds had passed between the goals.
The game continued but Barcelona just could not get ahead. As time went on, both teams tired, and soon when Barca had the ball Inter watched them play, both sides moving from side to side across Inter’s penalty area like some kind of choreographed performance at the Globe Theatre. In the 75th minute Inter had the ball in the net again, but it was rightly judged to be offside.
The 90th minute came and they had settled into a rhythm. Raphinha tried another long-range effort, almost a carbon copy of his equaliser, but this time Yann Sommer was able to get a hand on it and tip it over the bar. A few more minutes went by. Stalemate.
