Key events
Half-time entertainment. To reset one’s equilibrium.
HALF TIME: Barcelona 2-2 Inter
The fastest-ever goal in a Champions League semi. A spectacular scissor kick. An exquisitely cushioned assist. Lamine Yamal. Lamine Yamal. Lamine Yamal. That … that was football.
45 min: There will be two additional first-half minutes. Can we not have 22, please?
44 min: Martínez suddenly pulls up. He wants to come off, but Simone Inzaghi screams at his captain to continue. Martinez hobbles around, but stays on for now.
43 min: Raphinha tries to score with a sidefoot into the bottom left from 25 yards. It’s blocked out for a corner, and from the set piece, Lamal nearly successfully one-twos his way down the right channel and into a shooting position. He’s crowded out just in time.
42 min: Kounde can’t continue, and Eric García comes on in his stead.
40 min: Kounde goes down holding his left leg. On comes the trainer. The only way the ferocious pace of this game could be halted.
GOAL! Barcelona 2-2 Inter (Torres 38)
Yeah, they’ve responded well all right. Pedri, in space down the inside-right channel, crosses long towards Raphinha, who cushions a header back across goal and into the path of Torres, who gets in ahead of Acerbi and can’t miss from six yards. Barca are level! That was so simple yet so perfectly executed. Inter ripped apart with ease.
37 min: … from which nothing comes. But this is gloriously relentless. Barca have responded so well to the toxic shock of going two goals down at home, in short order, in a European semi-final. Against an Italian team.
36 min: Yamal wins the ball in the middle of the park with a crunching tackle on Bastoni. This lad can do it all. Barca break and Olmo aims for the bottom right. Sonner turns around the post for a corner …
34 min: Yamal again down the right. Another cross. Dimarco sent to the shops for the Mundo Deportivo this time. Sonner slaps away, just in time, with Raphinha lurking. This is getting old.
33 min: Barella, spotting Szczęsny wandering around outside his box, shapes to shoot from the centre circle. He times it all wrong and takes a fresh-air swipe. He ends up looking a tad preposterous, but full marks for ambition, and to be fair it feels like the sort of evening when a goal from the halfway line isn’t out of the question. There’s something in the air. Such a beautiful horizon!
31 min: Yamal is borderline unplayable. He crosses low from the right, nearly teeing up either Torres or Raphinha on the penalty spot. Sommer does exceptionally well to get down and paw the ball away, though he’s fortunate it flies off between the two Barca attackers.
30 min: De Jong rolls a pass down the inside-right channel to Olmo, who spins on the edge of the box and fights his way past Bastoni. He’s clear in the box! But the ball sticks between his feet and though he gets a shot away, it’s weak and straight at Sommer.
28 min: … and relax. Nobody’s going to relax, though, are they?
26 min: Three astonishing goals in 24 minutes. And it’s nearly four in 26, as Yamal sends Dimarco off to the nearest tapas bar, dribbling into the box from the right, hitting the byline, cutting back to send the defender skidding hysterically off the pitch, and lashing a shot across Sommer and off the underside of the crossbar! In fact, Sommer got a fingertip to that. What a save that was. But what outrageous skill by Yamal.
GOAL! Barcelona 1-2 Inter (Yamal 24)
Oh my goodness, Barcelona need something … and oh my goodness, here it is! Yamal picks up the ball, facing the wrong way out on the right flank. He spins Thuram, drifts elegantly into the box past Mkhitaryan, opens his body, and sends a fierce curler towards the top left. It pings off the upright and in. What a goal! What a genius! What a match!
23 min: Pedri didn’t fancy competing for that dropping ball. Had he done so, Dumfries might not have been permitted to high-kick the ball goalwards. But there was no challenge, so no danger.
GOAL! Barcelona 0-2 Inter (Dumfries 21)
Dimarco wins a corner down the left. It’s hit long. Acerbi wins a header ten yards out. The ball drops to Dumfries, six yards out. Dumfries bicycle-kicks sensationally past Szczęsny and into the left-hand side of the net! Shock around the Olímpic Lluís Companys!
19 min: Yamal wins another corner down the right. Raphinha loops it long. De Jong prepares to head home at the far stick, but Bisseck flicks away for a corner on the other side. That one’s worked to Torres, on the left-hand corner of the six-yard box. Torres chests down and pearls a shot across goal and inches wide of the right-hand post. Sommer was rooted to the spot.
17 min: Justin Kavanagh wonders: “Isn’t Rule No1 of European football Never Give Up a Goal in the First 30 Seconds to an Italian Team in the First Leg? At home?” Dimarco offers an answer to this question by taking an absolute age over a throw-in, a tactic that registers a full score of 11 on our patented Mourinho-o-meter™. The home fans not happy.
15 min: Martin cops a hand in the face from Dumfries, and this is a free kick for Barca out on the left. Raphinha curls it long, but it’s an easy punch clear for Sommer. This is being played at 101 miles per hour.
14 min: Bisseck slips and allows Raphinha to skedaddle down the left. A low cross is hooked away by Mkhitaryan, with home heroes lurking. Neither team look particularly assured in defence.
12 min: Torres meets a low cross from the right and drags his shot inches wide right. So close to an equaliser.
11 min: Barella crosses from the right. Martinez goes up for a header but is beaten by Szczęsny’s punch. Mkhitaryan returns it with a low drive from distance. It flies inches wide of the left-hand post. Had it been on target, Szczęsny wasn’t getting there … but Martinez had grazed the ball as it came through with an attempted backflick, and so it’d have been ruled out for offside anyway.
9 min: Yamal bursts down the right and nearly gets the better of Bastoni, but the defender sticks out an arm and eases him out of the road. Yamal goes over in the box, and you’ve seen very soft penalties been given for that sort of challenge – but not this time.
8 min: Inter shuttle the ball towards Dumfries out on the right again. Dumfries tries to beat Martinez in a footrace, but can’t burn past his man. Inter clearly fancy their chances down this flank.
6 min: Çalhanoğlu and De Jong challenge for a dropping ball in the Inter box. De Jong gets there first and goes down, claiming contact and a penalty, but the referee’s not interested and neither is VAR.
5 min: Torres makes good down the right and wins the first corner of the game. Raphinha can’t beat the first man with his delivery. Very poor. But it’s been all Barca since that jaw-dropping start by Inter.
4 min: Yamal responds with a couple of dribbles down the right. At the end of the second, he stands one up to the far stick, where Raphinha awaits … but Bisseck is on point to clear. What a start to this semi-final!
2 min: …. so Inter missed Thuram all right. What a way for him to break Inter’s three-game goalless streak!
GOAL! Barcelona 0-1 Inter (Thuram 30 sec)
Dumfries barrels down the right into space. He crosses. Kounde half-clears. Barella picks up possession again and slips the ball down the right for Dumfries, who crosses once more. Martinez slips. Thuram, six yards out and facing the wrong way, dispatches the ball into the bottom left with an audacious back-flick!
Inter get the ball rolling. They’re playing in white this evening. And they’re immediately on the attack …
Here come the teams … and Lamine Yamal, who felt a twinge upon slipping while taking a shot in the warm-up, is still in the Barcelona line-up. He doesn’t look particularly concerned as the Champions League anthem is blasted out, nor when he slaps hands with the Inter players. No Ronaldo-at-the-Stade-de-France-style drama to see here. We’ll be off in a minute, once everyone pays their respects to Pope Francis.
A big blow for Barcelona. Lamine Yamal has departed the warm-up, gingerly holding his left thigh and groin. He goes down the tunnel looking concerned. He’s not moving too awkwardly, but he might not be risked, with the second leg, a possible final, and a La Liga title-decider against Real Madrid all on the horizon.
That 2010 semi-final between José and Barça. “Ah, to return to the days when the global challenge uppermost in mind was how to correctly pronounce Eyjafjallajökull,” sighs Grant Tennille, all salad days and nostalgic haze. Well, sir, the MBM can help you with that.
How Inter got here. The Italian champions finished fourth in the group stage. Their campaign began with a goalless draw at Manchester City, before chalking up six wins – Red Star Belgrade (h) 4-0, Young Boys (a) 1-0, Arsenal (h) 1-0, RB Leipzig (h) 1-0, Sparta Prague (a) 1-0 and Monaco (h) 3-0 – plus a 1-0 defeat at Bayer Leverkusen. (Five 1-0s and a goalless draw! Helenio Herrera would have been delighted with that sequence of scorelines.) Anyway, Feyenoord were seen off 4-1 on aggregate in the round of 16, and then it was Bayern Munich in the quarters …
How Barcelona got here. The Catalans came second in the mega-group, despite losing their first fixture 2-1 away at Monaco. They went on to beat Young Boys (h) 5-0, Bayern Munich (h) 4-1, Red Star Belgrade (a) 5-2, Brest (h) 3-0, Borussia Dortmund (a) 3-2 and Benfica (a) 5-4, before finally drawing 2-2 at home with Atalanta. Benfica were dispatched 4-1 on aggregate in the round of 16, then Barca faced Dortmund in the quarters, whereupon …
Pre-match entertainment. Here’s Jonathan Liew on the redemption of Raphinha.
Barcelona name the same XI that started the Copa del Rey final. Robert Lewandowski remains absent with a muscle injury.
Internazionale have lost their last three matches without scoring, something that hasn’t happened since February 2012, so it’s no surprise that they’ve made five changes to their starting XI after the 1-0 home defeat to Roma. Marcus Thuram, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Denzel Dumfries, Alessandro Bastoni and Yann Bisseck step up; Davide Frattesi, Marko Arnautović, Carlos Augusto and Matteo Darmian drop to the bench, while Benjamin Pavard misses out after picking up an ankle injury at the weekend. Inter will be delighted to welcome back Thuram: the striker, who has 17 goals in all competitions so far this season, missed all three games of Inter’s blank run.
The teams
Barcelona: Szczesny, Kounde, Cubarsi, Martinez, Gerard, de Jong, Gonzalez, Yamal, Olmo, Raphinha, Torres.
Subs: Pena, Astralaga, Araujo, Gavi, Fati, Torre, Christensen, Lopez, Victor, Garcia, Fort.
Internazionale: Sommer, Bisseck, Acerbi, Bastoni, Dumfries, Barella, Calhanoglu, Mkhitaryan, Dimarco, Lautaro Martinez, Thuram.
Subs: Di Gennaro, Josep Martinez, de Vrij, Zielinski, Arnautovic, Frattesi, Asllani, Carlos Augusto, Darmian, Re Cecconi, Zalewski, Taremi.
Referee: Clément Turpin (France).
VAR: Jérôme Brisard (France).
Preamble
Barcelona are currently high on life. They’re playing some delightful football. They’ve just won the Copa del Rey, they’re four points clear in La Liga with five matches to go, and the only team who can realistically stop them winning a domestic double are in no fit state, currently preoccupied with the throwing of a season-long tanty. And so it’s not much of a leap to suggest the continental treble is very much on. Hansi Flick and Robert Lewandowski have already completed one of these, with Bayern Munich in 2020, so Barca are in possession of the roadmap. It really is on.
Internazionale’s mood is less buoyant. They haven’t won in four, and while that sequence started with the 2-2 draw that saw them squeak past Bayern Munich in the quarters, they’ve since fallen behind Napoli on the Serie A run-in after back-to-back defeats against Bologna and Roma, and been spanked 3-0 in the semi-final of the Coppa Italia by their arch rivals Milan. A season that promised a continental treble of their own is unravelling at pace. They need something tonight.
But all hope for Inter is not lost. Because this semi-final clash will be played under the historical cloud of this …
… so it’s all set up just so. It promises to be great fun, one way or another. Kick-off at the Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys is at 9pm Barcelona time, 8pm BST. It’s on!