Barcelona and Inter shared six goals in a classic of a Champions League semi-final first leg at Montjuic.
Inter went ahead within 30 seconds from an audacious Marcus Thuram backheel before Denzel Dumfries put them 2-0 up in the 21st minute with an acrobatic finish following an outswinging corner.
But Lamine Yamal then dragged Barca back into the game with an extraordinary piece of skill in the 24th minute. And Barca were level in the 38th minute when a Pedri ball over the top was headed down by Raphinha into the path of Ferran Torres.
Inter went back ahead in the 64th minute with another outswinging corner headed home by Dumfries — but Barca responded with their own corner-kick routine, with Yamal dummying for Raphinha to crash a shot in off the bar (via goalkeeper Yann Sommer). And there was still time for a Henrikh Mkhitaryan goal to be ruled out for the tightest of offside calls and Yamal’s cross-shot to somehow hit the bar.
Here, Jack Lang, Dermot Corrigan and Liam Tharme analyse the key talking points and where it leaves things ahead of the second leg at San Siro on Tuesday.
Honours even after wild ride
Some football matches are easy enough to analyse. Winners, losers, bit of a moan, move on. This one? Not so much. A team of forensic experts would take weeks to properly pick through the ashes.
It wasn’t just that things were happening, everywhere, all of the time. It was that the evening left us with precisely zero certainty about anything whatsoever.
Barcelona were brilliant in patches, knitting patterns that Inter couldn’t parse. Pedri ran the match like it was a card game in his basement; Yamal was so consistently dangerous it was actually funny. They were also fragile in the extreme, meekly allowing Inter to race into the lead and then repeating the trick in the second half, just when they looked certain to take control themselves.
Inter did not really play very well. There is no shame in putting 11 men behind the ball, as they did for most of the first half. The problem was that the midfield was completely overrun: Henrikh Mkhitaryan spent the game trying — failing! — to make things harder for Yamal, while Nicolo Barella was just not at the races. A half-fit Marcus Thuram managed to do some damage but there was little fluency to their play.
And yet Inter led 2-0, then 3-2. How did that happen? Barcelona will spend the next week trying to work that out. The Catalans will be buoyed by the guts they showed getting back into the match. Inter, bizarrely, suddenly burst into life around 75 minutes and might easily have scored a fourth. It was that kind of night — loose, frayed, nonsensical.
Who will be happiest with this result? I have absolutely no idea. Now be a pal and give me another hit on the defibrillator.
Jack Lang
Inter’s fast start stuns Barca
It felt like rewatching Inter in 2023 all over again.
Two years ago, Inter scored twice in the first 11 minutes of the Champions League semi-final first-leg ‘away’ to city rivals Milan, and never looked back.
This time, it was twice in the first 21 minutes, but like that Milan game, one goal was from a trademark vertical move and wing-back low cross, and the other from a corner.
Thuram’s opener after 30 seconds was the fastest in a semi-final in competition history. It had special significance for the 27-year-old given his father Lilian ended his career at Barca from 2006-2008 and was sitting in the VIP box at Montjuic.
Inter went short and played back from the kick-off to bait a Barcelona press, before centre-back Francesco Acerbi kicked long. Lautaro Martinez won the flick-on, Thuram tapped it into Barella’s path and he released far-side wing-back Dumfries.
This is a trademark Inter move to hit long and connect between the two strikers before releasing a wing-back, and exploited Barcelona’s high line. Dumfries’ first cross — for left wing-back Federico Dimarco, who had crashed the box — was cleared.
Barella reworked the angle and Thuram had caught up, arriving to backheel Dumfries’ dipping cross in at the near post.
It made it four European goals this term for Thuram, half as many as club captain Lautaro (eight). But it was also an example of how dangerous a role those forwards play in the build-up for their own goals.
Inter’s corner to double their lead followed the same textbook outswinger they have used to great effect this season, with Dumfries acrobatically volleying in Acerbi’s header towards goal — their 14th goal from a corner in all competitions this term.
Inter had stunned this treble-chasing team and their supporters — but Barca responded in style.
Liam Tharme
Breaking down that piece of Yamal magic
There did not seem much trouble for Inter when Yamal picked up the ball, 35 yards out from goal, near the byline, with 10 Inter players between him and the goal.
Plus, he first had to turn back towards halfway, to shrug off the attention of Thuram.
A burst of pace took him around a pretty static Mkhitaryan, but the danger was not yet evident, with four defenders relatively close to the teenager as he approached the penalty area.
But Yamal continued to advance at high pace and then chose his moment perfectly, using central defender Bastoni as a screen and curling the ball into the net via the far post, leaving Inter keeper Yann Sommer with zero chance of making a save.
It was a tremendous goal, which was even more impressive in the circumstances — with Barca 2-0 down following Inter’s fast start. Yamal had also given Barca fans a huge scare by appearing to pick up a problem in the warm-up, holding his groin while speaking with a club physio and then disappearing down the tunnel less than 20 minutes before kick-off.
But he took his place in the starting line-up for his 100th Barca appearance, becoming the second youngest player ever to start a Champions League semi-final at 17 years and 291 days old, only beaten by Schalke’s Julian Draxler against Manchester United in 2011.
He now has 22 goals and 33 assists over that century of Barca games — including a pair of assists to help win last Saturday’s fierce Copa del Rey final against Real Madrid.
But of his many characteristics, the most impressive of all could be the character he shows to do something special when his team really needs it — like he did when he struck another scarcely believable effort against France for Spain in last year’s European Championship semi-final with his team 1-0 down.
When Barca were rocking tonight, it was their youngest player who pulled them back into the game. He set up chances for team-mates Ferran Torres and Dani Olmo, and almost scored a second wondergoal himself two minutes after his first effort, dribbling past two defenders before Sommer pulled off a fantastic finger-tip save to divert his shot onto the woodwork. He hit the woodwork again late in the second half after earlier showing supreme skill when he left two Inter players in his wake, below.
Lamine Yamal is not yet 18 years old, but he could well already be the best player in the world.
Dermot Corrigan
What was behind the three goals from corners?
The idea of set pieces deciding big European matches is something of a cliche — but it was proved true here, with three of the six goals coming via that route.
Inter scored twice from their first two corners — that they only had two in the first 63 minutes is a sign of how counter-attacking and defensively they ended up playing the game.
The delivery was almost identical both times, a whipped right-footed ball from the right by Hakan Calhanoglu, but the finish changed.
Dumfries was first to meet a header towards goal by Acerbi to make it 0-2, with Barcelona defending particularly man-to-man against a tall Inter team — and one that always maintains a set-piece threat because they play three centre-backs, two strikers and have technicians aplenty in central midfield.
Barca goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny was clearly mindful of stopping the source for Inter’s third goal and tried to claim the outswinger but missed, having swept up well in open play a few times earlier in the second half.
It left Dumfries with the simple task of outjumping Dani Olmo at the back post and heading into an empty net, with lone zonal marker Ronald Araujo not able to get across in time — and made Dumfries the first Dutchman to be involved in three goals in a Champions League semi-final (two goals, one assist).
With a starting XI 1.5 centimetres shorter on average than Inter’s, Barcelona’s equaliser — just two minutes after Inter went 3-2 up — was never going to be an outswinging corner for an aerial finish like Inter scored twice from. Instead, the bodies in the box became decoys and they went short for Raphinha to rifle from distance. His clean strike got the bit of luck it needed when it hit the bar and went in off Sommer’s back.
Liam Tharme
Would this game have been the same with the away goals rule?
With the score at 3-3, the action kept flowing back and forward. It already felt like the closing stages of a second leg, with Inter not at all settling in to hold onto the draw which they could take back to San Siro next week.
Before the away-goals rule was discontinued by UEFA in summer 2021 — meaning away goals were the decider in two-legged ties which finished in an aggregate draw — teams who were 3-3 up were generally very happy to keep that scoreline, knowing that a 0-0, 1-1, or 2-2 draw in the return game would be enough for them to progress. Jose Mourinho’s Inter team who won at Barca on the way to the 2010 Champions League trophy and the treble would definitely have been in ‘what we have, we hold’ mode.
But not this Inter side, who kept flowing forward — even after Raphinha’s equaliser had appeared to swing the momentum back Barca’s way. Current coach Simone Inzaghi made positive substitutions, and his team continued to look to try and exploit Barca’s rocky defensive high line.
Barca experienced a let-off when the officials did not punish an apparent handball by Inigo Martinez when he seemed the deepest of their defenders. And they escaped again when Inter got behind them again and only the narrowest of offside calls, below, stopped Mkhitaryan from making it 4-3.
It made for tremendous drama — and if the scrapping of the away goals rule had any part in the entertainment, it has been a welcome change.
Dermot Corrigan
What did Hansi Flick say?
“He is special,” Flick said of Yamal in his post-match press conference. “I’ve said before he is a genius. During the game, when I looked at the match from the outside, you see all the details and it is unbelievable how he does it.
“For me the best thing is that he keeps going strong. In the big games, he keeps showing how good he is. He enjoys the situation. I am really happy that, if this talent comes every 50 years, that he plays for Barcelona.”
Raphinha also spoke to Spanish broadcaster Movistar.
“Our feeling is that we could have had a much better result,” the Brazil forward said. “We’ve conceded a lot of goals again, at home, which is unacceptable. But we also have to admit that Inter played very well, they are very strong at corners. We tried our best but the important thing is we have a result where anything can still happen. We’ll prepare much better for next week.”
“For us it’s important we keep playing the same way, the same style,” Flick added. “We have 90 more minutes and hopefully it’s enough to be in the final.”
What did Simone Inzaghi say?
“There were excellent moments today but times where we suffered too,” he said, as reported by UEFA.com. “We were facing a great team in the form of Barcelona. But now they know they’re facing a great side in Inter next week, and in Milan.
“At half-time we changed a little. We had to mark Lamine Yamal even better — that guy really impacted on me tonight.
“To see him up close really impressed me. I’m really enthusiastic about what my lads did. They worked really hard against him, doubling and tripling up on him.”
What next for Barcelona?
Saturday, May 3: Real Valladolid (away), La Liga, 8pm UK, 3pm ET
What next for Inter?
Saturday, May 3: Hellas Verona (home), Serie A, 7.45pm UK, 2.45pm ET
(Top photo: Jose Breton/Pics Action/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
