With the final kick of a ragged, enthralling two legs Kingsley Coman volleyed too high and San Siro could erupt. The grand old venue had been buffeted by wind and water all evening but here was the fire: Inter’s players wheeled over towards their faithful, the stands bouncing to the tune of another legend in the making.
European football will miss this stadium achingly whenever it is finally put out to pasture; here it hosted another cocktail of gravitas and exuberance, tense to the last before bursting at the seams, and goodness knows what awaits when Barcelona arrive in the semi-finals three weeks from now.
Nobody should sleep on Inter as a credible contender to go all the way. They rode their luck during periods of this tie but, at every moment of doubt, found an intervention that bent things in their direction. That kind of quality is usually deemed intangible but Lautaro Martínez, yet to calm down while pandemonium reigned around him, had his own attempt at defining it. “Inter has two balls like that,” he said. “It was an epic match. Inter does not die, Inter has personality, heart and brains. Inter is made for great things.”
Martínez could thump out the bombast because he had put Inter back on track after Harry Kane, down on his haunches while the home side partied, had levelled the tie. Like his team, Martínez had worked busily for almost an hour without posing much direct threat. He vaulted the advertising hoardings after lashing in a loose ball, presented to him when his header struck Joshua Kimmich, and Inter could spy a way out of their awkward spot.
Soon afterwards Benjamin Pavard, powering in Hakan Calhanoglu’s corner for his first goal since joining Inter from Bayern in 2023, doubled their cushion and brought the house down. It said plenty for Bayern that they could nonetheless have forced extra time, Eric Dier looping a header beyond Yann Sommer and bringing about that frenzied finale. “There was a lot that felt right today,” Vincent Kompany said, but the lasting emotion for his side was regret.
“It’s a hard reality that we’re not going to play the Champions League final at home,” Kompany added. An injury-hit Bayern had wasted chances at the Allianz Arena last week, Kane the most glaring offender, and shaded things on that metric this time too.
Thomas Müller, who had equalised in the first meeting, was recalled to the starting lineup as captain and a greater sense of clarity resulted. His link-ups with Michael Olise carved through Inter three times in the first 11 minutes, the most notable opening seeing Alessandro Bastoni deny the London-born forward with a goal-saving tackle.
Before half-time Müller would see a shot blocked and, just after Kane had punished a backing-off Federico Dimarco with a laser-like finish across Sommer, he spooned over from a fine position on the left of the box. This was an appearance that put him joint third in this competition’s all-time rankings, alongside Lionel Messi, but he will leave Bayern at the season’s end and may not grace this stage again. A degree of their old dead-eyed inevitability will depart with him.
He would rue the fact Martínez, showcasing the anatomical qualities he evidently prizes, converted almost immediately after that miss. Pavard picked his moment three minutes after and the sequence summed up Inter’s endeavours over the piece. They did not flow for long periods in either match but moments of devastating emphasis and explosion never feel far away. Simone Inzaghi must have envisaged those coming from counterattacks but both goals came from left-sided set-pieces that Bayern did not handle.
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Vicious winds, joined after the interval by sheets of rain, did not help Nicolò Barella to reproduce the artistry with which he had sprinkled proceedings in Munich. Nor did they help Henrikh Mkhitaryan when, after a marvellous piece of first-half skill, the ball eventually took a bizarre flight back towards Inter’s half. But they were not the ones who would be harmed if the elements disrupted play and ultimately, for all Bayern’s probing, they could claim to have performed the basics better.
Kane hooked over in added time, the angle awkward but the goal beckoning, and will wonder if club football’s biggest prize is destined to slip away. He and Kompany thought Inter had over-celebrated their dramatic victory eight days before but no such complaints would have been credible while the festivities raged this time. “We’re not putting limits on ourselves,” Pavard said. Inter’s ambition seared into the night.
