Sometimes football is silly and sometimes it is more fun for it. On a night when there were 37 shots and the goalkeepers shared thirteen saves between them, some of them absurd, José Mourinho’s Real Madrid found a way to beat his former team Inter in his first Champions League night of his second spell. Just don’t ask exactly how. Except perhaps to cite Thibaut Courtois, whose astonishing save in the 89th minute saw them hold on to a 2-0 first-half lead given then by goals from Kylian Mbappé and Fede Valverde themselves. You would say that they had shot themselves in the foot, only if they tried, Courtois would probably save that too. This wasn’t always good, in fact at times it was terrible, but they had got through somehow.
You would say that they had shot themselves in the foot, only if they tried, Courtois would probably save that too. This wasn’t always good, in fact at times it was terrible, but they had got through somehow. When Madrid scored the first, this grand arena cheered but they might as well have laughed too. That Madrid led really didn’t make much sense; not when it came to the goal and not when it came to the game either. It had taken Madrid four minutes to get a meaningful hold of the ball, and by then Courtois had already made a superb save from Marcus Thuram. But now, somehow, they led. Ninety minutes later, they still did.
Inter had been playing round them with what looked like an ease, until suddenly even the simplest things looked complicated. Hakan Calhanoglu had just fired off the third shot and Lautaro Martínez the fourth when it happened. Inter had enjoyed 65% of possession which actually felt like rather more until then suddenly gave it up, and in a way that was comic.
Under pressure from Trent Alexander-Arnold, Curtis Jones made a mess of the first ball, playing it back for Yann Bisseck who for one brief moment seemed to lose his bearing and his footing. Stumbling like someone had put his legs on the wrong way round, he gave it away to Brahim Díaz who first time sent Mbappé away and he finished past Josep Martínez. It was Madrid’s first shot, gifted their attack, and the opening goal.
If that was absurd, what came next was even more ridiculous. What is it that Real Madrid do to goalkeepers in this competition? Receiving on his line, Martínez saw Fede Valverde coming and tried a drag back, which of course failed. A swift flick of the ankle and from a metre, Valverde had scored. Twenty-three minutes had gone and it was 2-0.
The lead might even have grown when another awful loss saw Vinícius Júnior dashing away. This time, Bissek made a fantastic saving challenge right on the edge of the six-yard box. There was something exhilarating about Vinícius’s acceleration and for all the fortune this did start to feel a little like a plan now: force the mistake, punish it. Madrid would force many more too, which they didn’t punish. Inter, meanwhile, recovered and reasserted themselves, a calmness in possession at the top of the pitch that contrasted with the calamitousness in possession further back.
Jones, Martínez and Carlos Augusto played their way round Madrid again, virtually walking into the area, Jones turning and smashing a shot off the bar. Then just before the break, another gift, this time from Benjamin Pavard, saw Madrid escape again. Mbappé got in, Bellingham was denied by a wonderful stop from Martínez and Díaz hit the post from the rebound. Inter led 12-3 in shots and had 70% of the ball. They had also completed 125 passes in the final third; Madrid had completed 13.
The second half began with Martínez coming out to stop Mbappé, dashing through again, but Inter came back at them. Madrid’s midfield just didn’t exist. Which didn’t always matter as they ran through it. Courtois, though, does: he saved from Jones. There was a Nicolò Barella shot wide and Thuram scooped over. Then the stadium then stood to applaud when Courtois made an outrageous double stop on 55 minutes which, although the flag was up anyway, spoke of a kind of disbelief.
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The feeling was similar when Martínez saved Inter at the other end, somehow scrambling across his line to stop Jude Bellingham after Díaz’s glorious scoop over him and into the Englishman, three yards out. A competition was building between the goalkeepers. Inter, chasing, were increasingly open. Madrid could have killed this, and quite a few times. Equally, Inter could have opened it. On the hour Courtois saved from Alessandro Bastoni. At the other end, Martínez saved from Mbappé with his legs. That was 6-5 to Courtois.
There were some whistles, frustration appearing, but there was also a kind of wild fun about this now, the chances too quick to keep up with: the twenty seconds or so between Martínez getting blocked at one end and Díaz slotting wide at the other told a tale. Then a Valverde shot wiped out Bissek, bravely putting his head in the way of a thumping shot. Still Inter came, and they finally found their way through, another clean, incisive exchange finding Lautaro Martínez on the byline, from where he pulled back perfectly for Augusto to finish from six yard. There were fifteen minutes left and a game on, but that, somehow, was that.