After the silence, the explosion. It was the biggest game this city has seen in two decades, and if there was a certain restraint to the emotions at full time it was only the knowledge that next week’s will be bigger still. Yet after 90 minutes we have a clear favourite: Simone Inzaghi’s flawed but fearless Inter Milan, who claimed the spoils in a startling opening burst and then held off their bitter rivals through gritted teeth, and against an atmosphere that shook the senses.
Even on their home turf this was an away game for Inter, and as pre-match nerves gave way to open hostility, they produced a performance to stand alongside any in the club’s recent European history. Edin Dzeko and Henrikh Mkhitaryan claimed the goals, but in reality this was a triumph of leadership: not so much from Inzaghi himself but from the big-game players who did their jobs, won their duels, sensed and sniffed their way through the sort of game for which no team talk or training can really prepare you.
For AC Milan, the only small mercy is that there is still a semi-final to salvage. This is a club steeped in the heritage of the European Cup, who have played beyond themselves to reach this point and will back themselves to do the same next Tuesday. But there comes a point when tradition and institutional memory run up against the hard-edged necessities of, you know, being able to clear the ball from your own penalty area. And on some level perhaps Milan were simply disoriented by the size of the occasion, rattled by the noise, blown out of their comfort zone.
But before the explosion, there was silence. Silence on the metro, silence in the piazzas and silence in the cafes. Milan was a siege city in the hours before this game, gripped by the sort of fretful and sullen anxiety that defines all the world’s great derbies. Milan and Inter are not neighbours. They are the same blood. They live and work in the same neighbourhoods, sit in the same bars and metro carriages: an intimacy that on nights like these breeds an almost suffocating tension. This thing is only fun if you win.
And yet for all the portents of a guarded and grizzled game, this was a more vivid and enterprising spectacle than we had any right to expect. Inter were more compact, more physical, more experienced – almost three years older on average – and seized their advantage by moving the game on to their own terms. They knew, of course, that even without Rafael Leão (injured), Milan can kill you down the flanks. So their back five put Milan’s wingers in a lethal pincer, forcing them to play through the centre where they were weaker, and weaker still after Ismaël Bennacer was forced off early.
By which point Inter could really have finished the tie off. Those two early goals both came from pressure down the left: first Dzeko extending his leg like a periscope to hook Hakan Calhanoglu’s corner into the net with Davide Calabria a helpless prisoner in his grasp. Next Calabria was burned by Federico Dimarco, whose clever cut-back was converted by Henrikh Mkhitaryan. Not even the most rose-tinted nerazzurro could have dreamed of a start like this. A flare went off in the Curva Nord and the delirious Inter fans danced around its hot pink glare like it was the first fire they had ever seen in their lives.
Milan were utterly lost in those early stages. Calhanoglu rattled the post. A harmless long throw was missed by Fikayo Tomori and the irrepressible Lautaro Martínez won a penalty that was overturned on review. In midfield Sandro Tonali ran and ran until his studs were blunt, trying to plug the gaps that were opening everywhere like quicksand. From the plush seats Paolo Maldini and Andriy Shevchenko sat in stony-faced judgment, a reminder that whatever happens in the remaining 90 minutes, this is still a club with more past than future.
after newsletter promotion
As half-time came and went, Milan had at least managed to stem the bleeding. Brahim Díaz, moved to the centre to replace Bennacer, was getting some joy in the No 10 position. Tonali rattled a shot against the outside of the post. The noise in the stadium was a godly thing: a distinctively Italian song of pure hunger and pure longing, a screaming and a pleading, pyrotechnics that rattled the ribcages, the sort of roar that forces coaches to talk in sign language.
A grand finish? That, of course, is still to come. There was little of note to distinguish the closing stages, as both coaches rattled through their substitutions and tried to win cheap free-kicks. Romelu Lukaku ran around a bit. The noise dropped a little. And Inter prevailed; albeit with the knowledge that next week will not be the victory parade it initially promised to be. Six days. We go again.
