It seemed impossible to top the first leg of the Champions League semifinal between Internazionale and Barcelona, a beautiful concerto of impossible goals and individual stardom. And yet, the two clubs, fighting savagely for a spot in the final, went out on Tuesday at the San Siro and not only topped it, but sent the entire tie into tournament lore. Seven goals across 120 minutes, unheralded stopgaps stepping into the spotlight, another magnificent goalkeeping display, a center back scoring the goal of his life ... the second leg had it all and more, and it was only due to a moment of nervous excellence from Inter's Davide Frattesi that the Italian side is on its seventh Champions League final, while Barcelona will rue this narrowest of missed opportunities.
Where to even begin? The second leg didn't burst into action as quickly as the first, though to be fair, few games start with a goal 30 seconds in. But these two teams are such a perfect contrast of styles that it couldn't stay quiet for too long. Barcelona dominated possession as usual, but any time the Blaugrana made a mistake, Inter's deadly counter-attack would strike back immediately. As soon as the initial feeling out process concluded, the match was off to the races.
Lautaro Martínez landed the first blow, capitalizing on one of those Barcelona mistakes. Dani Olmo was too casual with the ball in his own half, allowing Federico Dimarco to strip it and then slot an all-too-easy line-breaking ball to first-leg hero Denzel Dumfries, who hit a similarly easy cutback to Martínez, gifting the Argentine an open goal to shoot into:
Just before halftime, Inter replicated its advantage from the first leg, with a helpful assist from VAR. While in real-time, Pau Cubarsí looked to have made a hell of a goal-saving tackle on Martínez inside the box, video replay revealed that the Barcelona defender first came through Martínez's foot, leading to a penalty and a Hakan Calhanoglu goal:
I'll head this off now: despite Barcelona newspapers complaining about the refereeing, it was mostly pretty good. The VAR call for the penalty was correct, and if anything, Barcelona got away with a few moments thanks to the ref. Referee Szymon Marciniak (and the VAR) missed Iñigo Martínez appearing to spit on Francesco Acerbi during the post-penalty scrum, and Marciniak also blew the whistle on a promising Inter counter in extra time. That's good news for fans of high adrenaline soccer, because this match deserved as clean a stage for its show, and that's mainly what it got.
The great thing about Inter going up 2-0 is that it never felt like the tie was over, and that has a lot to do with this Barcelona side's passion for goals. The visitors immediately began climbing back on the other side of halftime. It only took nine minutes, and the aforementioned unheralded stopgaps to get the goals pouring in for the side clad in a garish lime green. With injuries to Alejandro Balde (out since early April) and Jules Koundé (who suffered a hamstring injury in the first leg), Gerard Martín and Eric García were thrust into the full back roles, a massive downgrade from two of Barcelona's most important players.
Nevertheless, it was those two who combined for a spectacular Barcelona goal to get them back into the game. After Inter snuffed out two initial passes deeper into the box, the ball fell to Martín, who lobbed a ball across the area, seemingly too hard for the attackers in front of goal. However, the ball floated just far enough to allow García to run in and hit an feathery side-footed shot that sailed into the far post, away from the magnetic hands of Yann Sommer:
Martín and García almost combined for another incredible goal, thanks to a razor-sharp counter-attack just two minutes later. But García proved why he's a center back by training when, from a situation very much like Martínez's on the match's opener, he shot straight at Sommer. García's goal and his almost-goal did demonstrate that the momentum had thoroughly swung in Barça's direction, though, and Martín would help get his team on the scoresheet again just a little while later. In the 60th minute, after Barcelona recycled possession from a free kick, Frenkie de Jong handed the ball off to the young left back, who curled a cross past everyone, save for an onrushing Olmo, who rocketed the header into the net, leaving Sommer again with little chance.
Speaking of Sommer: the Swiss goalkeeper was the biggest reason why this tie wasn't a rout. He would go on to star in the extra time of Wednesday's game, and I'll get there, but he was called into action a few times in regulation as well. The above save on García didn't call for anything spectacular, but his 77th-minute full-stretch denial of a Lamine Yamal laser sure did:
If Sommer made one mistake in the second leg, it was almost the one that cost Inter everything. In the 87th minute, Raphinha, mostly quiet on the day, received the ball on the left side of the box with just enough space to get onto his stronger foot and shoot, albeit directly at Sommer. It feels rough to calls this a "mistake" from the keeper, but instead of punching the ball away from goal, he could only get his hands up to knock it back, directly at Raphinha once more, who shot to the far post on the rebound giving Barcelona, in minute 177 of this tie, its first aggregate lead.
Even if the second leg had ended there, this would already be one of the greatest two-leg showdowns in European Cup history, but there were several twists left in this tale. If Barcelona only came back due to the unlikely full-back pairing it was forced to trot out, then Inter only survived due to the most unlikely of goalscorers picking exactly the right time to score an absolute banger. Deep into stoppage time, Inter played a long ball that fell, it seemed, safely to Martín, who should have cleared it into the stands. Instead, he tried to control the ball under pressure from the much bigger Dumfries, who was able to come away with it and hit a roller of a cross into the box, where center back Acerbi, of all people, was waiting to score his first goal of the season.
Extra time then beckoned, as perhaps it was always destined to in this tie. Unlike most extra-time contests, where it feels like one goal will decide it, I at least felt that were multiple moments of magic on the cards. I was perhaps deluded by how this leg had gone, but that's not to say it was disappointing that the next goal did in fact decide it in the end. Because what a goal it was. Marcus Thuram seemingly held off half the Barcelona defense for long enough to slot a pass into Mehdi Taremi, who had his back to goal with Cubarsí posting him up. The Iranian spotted Frattesi in space just a few yards away and laid the ball off to him, and the Italian did the rest, taking two stutter steps to throw off Cubarsí just long enough to create the breathing room he needed to strike into the far netting, giving Inter its fourth and final lead of the tie:
(Asked after the game by Thierry Henry about why he chose to dummy the shot in that moment, Frattesi broke out his wonderful, and wonderfully colorful, English skills to reply that he was "thinking that if I don't score, I'm fucked.")
Even after that late goal, there was no quit in Barcelona's attack, and given what it had shown before that moment, there was no reason to doubt that an equalizer could materialize. However, in the umpteenth head-to-head showdown between Lamine and Sommer, the keeper again came out on top. In the 114th minute, Barcelona's starboy hit a curler that had the back of the net as its only destination, if not for the finger-tips of the Swiss keeper, who was the man of the match. (It's not often a goalie gets that honor after giving up three goals, but Sommer was nearly flawless on Tuesday and in the first leg, notching 14 saves across both matches.)
That would not be Barcelona's last chance, but it was perhaps its best one. Lamine took aim at Sommer again a few moments later, but the save was much more routine. Eventually, time simply ran out for Barcelona.
With the win, Inter will face either Paris Saint-Germain or Arsenal in the final with a chance to win the club's fourth ever European Cup, while Barcelona will have a quick turnaround before a Clásico against Real Madrid with serious La Liga title implications. (It's probably a good thing that the match over the weekend is so important to the rest of Barcelona's season, because I'm not sure how the team could have gotten up for a regular league match after this grueling defeat.)
Whatever happens from here on out should not cloud what these two clubs provided over the span of a week. I'm going to stare recency bias in the face and say that, across both legs, this was the best Champions League semifinal I've ever seen, and it was probably the competition's best two-leg tie in my lifetime. There have been perhaps crazier individual games in this tournament in recent years—Barcelona's own 6-1 remontada against PSG in 2017, or Liverpool's 4-0 comeback against, uh, Barcelona in 2019—but Inter and Barça were so even in such drastically different ways that I can't help but think that this is club soccer at its very best. The tactical showdown was magnificent, and both managers acquitted themselves with laudable bravery in the face of gargantuan, opposite challenges. The star players delivered at one point or another, while new heroes emerged in the most unlikely of places. Sommer delivered a goalkeeping performance for the ages. There's so much more I could say about this tie, but at the end of the day, Inter survived through sheer determination and a brilliant bit of trickery from Frattesi, and damn if that wasn't thrilling to watch happen.
