It happens rarely, unfortunately more and more rarely. But there are extraordinary moments in which football becomes something different from a collective rite, from a television event, something that is not the usual game won or lost but an event that will be talked about for a long time. Something destined to remain in the narrative of this sport as a moment of absolute value, something that will be remembered and of which books and degree theses will be written one day. Perhaps as for Italy-Germany 4-3, Mexico ’70 semifinal, someone will also make us a film.

In legend

There is no doubt that Inter-Barcelona deserves to enter the legend: the semifinal of the 13 goals in two games brings the Nerazzurri to the Champions League final and in the register of records between extreme emotions, forgiven errors and an epic rewrite of fate. Simone Inzaghi’s team enters the Champions League final with the symbolic force of those who patiently collected fragments scattered of glory to recover them in a mosaic of tenacity and lucid madness.

So today it is right to go to that point where the rhetoric of football must also surrender. No script would have dared to imagine a semifinal with 13 goals (absolute record) between multiple limelight, unexpected heroes, fans out of the stadium that implore to return to have come out a few minutes before Acerbi’s goal. Fans in tears released just too early that implore the steward to be able to return to the temple.

The heroes you don’t expect

Inter who reaches the Final of Munich does so by rewriting the roles. It is not the stars expected to affect: apart from an extraordinary Lautaro in the first part of the match. Destiny relies on Francesco Acerbi, who at 37 years of age returns to European football the rough face of a protagonist out of time and patterns. His goal in recovery is not just a technical gesture: it is the desperate and glossy cry of a team that refuses to die.

And then Davide Frattesi, who entered to overturn fate, with the lightness of those who have everything to demonstrate and nothing to lose. His accident is not a lucky blow: it is a declaration of identity, the confirmation that this Inter is a community devoted to resilience, capable of building meaning and order also within chaos. That screaming face under the north is a stuff that deserves a figurine, indeed, the cover of an album of stickers. Even if the gentz is only interested in meme. Who know 2000 …

Imperfection as a stylistic figure of the company

There was no order. There was no perfection. Professor Franco Scoglio claimed that the only perfect match is the one that ends 0-0. Yet football rarely produced such an extraordinary show in its imperfection. Inter granted too much, made a mistake in defensive readings, saw certainties that seemed crystal clear after an excellent first half. But in this vulnerability it has found a new, more sincere, more human force. Like Rocky at the last recovery. But that was a film, and this is the damned reality.

The transition to the final does not come for control, but for emotional overload. Every goal immediately called into question the most visceral part of the group. Each fall has generated a repercussing that is not resignation, but will of reaction. It is a victory built on the paradox: you win by yielding, you pass by granting.

The break with the defensive identity: an act of courage

For years, Inter has been identified with a rigid defensive system, with a conception of calcium based on containment. Against Barcelona, ​​this identity is broken without hesitation. Yann Sommer, although decisive in the final, cannot stem everything. But Inter no longer seeks defensive perfection: seeking emotional superiority. You win by scoring a goal more than the opponents: never after such a game this football axiom seems more true than that.

This paradigm change is cultural, even before tactical. It is the demonstration that even an Italian team, also a training accustomed to the discipline of containment, can rewrite its destiny by choosing the way of abandonment to the flow. It is the praise of contamination: Inter becomes European in the fullest sense of the term. More Barça of Barça.

A link found between the team and the people

And then there is not only the qualification. The crazy Inter, of which the fans of the Nerazzurri team are so proud and who sing in their hymn before each song, for better or for worse, reaffirms his DNA of madness. And he tells us that there are victories and businesses: the former remain, the latter become unforgettable, told by grandparents, who perhaps today are only kids, to the very young of the generations who will come. And that for the first time they will see San Siro.

This game has the imperious strength of something that returns to welcome between the team and its people. Like the image of the imploring fans just to return. They will learn … you do not leave the stadium before the ritual is complete. It is sacrilegious. Even if the metro closes.

Inter-Barcelona, ​​one meter to measure the future

The Munich final will be another story. Maybe winning, maybe not. Hardly epochal like this. What happened between Inter and Barcelona will be the new emotional parameter with which we will judge all the football matches to come. From today, when we think at the highest level of involvement that a game can generate, we will think of this semifinal.

Inter did not only win a sporting battle. He marked a point in the collective history of continental football. He has shown that pathos can overcome the technique, which beauty can also emerge from disorder. And that, sometimes, salvation comes when you have the courage to lose control.

The finger and the moon

Is it worth dirtying a story like this with the other side of the medal? Do you have to do it? I take responsibility for it. Be wary of those who today will say that Inter is the testimony that Italian football, which our model is winning. This is what they always told us after any triumph, they drunk with these bullshit pretending to forget them when nothing was won. The truth is that our football system suffers, it needs money that comes from abroad, owners who treat us as an expensive but fascinating decandance and who know absolutely nothing. Of stadiums that are not owned and fans who kill themselves but do not know how to enjoy the show, and they delegate to Capiutrà who send the kids to make war while they sparkle the booty of everything they can grab. Worse of the merchants in the temple that even one who tell us as good as Jesus kicked in the butt.

Barcelona has an incredible youth sector that churns out repeated talents, on every better and younger lap. He is reconstructing a property of ownership intended to become one of the most beautiful plants in the world, he has almost 150 thousand members of an polysporty that pay a share every year to guarantee a future for all its divisions: football, basketball, handball, hockey, gymnastics, rowing. And they all win. This is a system.

Inter (and Milan) does not even know if San Siro after the Olympics next year will still be the home stadium and for how much. Programming in Italy is impossible. Inter have changed three owners in twelve years and at the moment is one of the best investments in the Oaktree fund: 200 billion dollars to be administered, a single football team buried between shopping centers, hotels, entire neighborhoods, private clinics, maritime companies, hospitals, newspapers and TV, a couple of companies that produce planes, several others that pack food, clothing and more. Football in Italy is a business for managers who do not distinguish a corner from a bench.

The Chinese advised to look at the moon and not the finger. But every now and then the satisfaction of winning deludes us that our finger is the moon … Barcelona who loses remains a model. Even when he loses.

And therefore, returning to the conditions of the first lines, there are nights in which football is stripped of its game function to cover that of collective ritual. Inter-Barcelona is not just a game: it is no longer at least. Now is the chapter apart from an out of measurement narration, an improvised sacred text on the lawn of the temple of San Siro. And the echo of this overall 7-6 will not remain confined to the tables: it will cross the time, as happens only to the companies that exceed the perimeter of the field. Amen.